


Kindness

by crowvo



Category: Left 4 Dead 2
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-12 06:50:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 45,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4469432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowvo/pseuds/crowvo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The apocalypse has carried on for most of Ellis's life-fifteen years of it, in fact. When he's left behind to fend for himself, how far will kindness carry him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Last Man Standing

It was gonna be another hot one. Hadn't rained in a few weeks, and that made things harder than it needed to be, but at least it meant the radio would have good reception. They had a schedule to keep up with.

Ellis made his way out of the little house that they'd successfully zombie-proofed. His ma had told him that back before all this shit started, it was just a " _safe room_ " constructed by CEDA. It must have taken her about a whole day to explain it all to him. Government. That shit sounded _powerfully_ weird. He got little glimpses of what the old world had been like through books, and whenever they had enough power to spare, he'd get a taste of it through movies and video games. Fun shit.

Not everybody had agreed though. His daddy had wanted to throw all that out, kept sayin' that they needed to save on power and supplies. Didn't even want guitars and drums around. Just wanted everybody to sit around and gripe all day, Ellis reckoned. That sounded borin' as hell.

It'd already been rare enough for them to even get enough time off to have fun, too. Just about every day, Ellis had to be out with the rest of the group scavengin' for supplies. It'd been fifteen years since the zombies came; Ellis could barely remember what life'd been like before. He remembered going to school and hangin' out with his buddy Keith. All that changed after the fact was that him and his buddy Keith would sit by a campfire while one of the college professors tried to teach them. It weren't a complete education, he knew that much, but it worked.

Around sixteen years old, they got some cars workin', so he started workin' on fixin' up one of the junkers they'd found. By then, they'd cleared out a nice little safe zone around a radio tower. His ma would march in there every single day and broadcast out a message. She'd mention supplies and safety, and give out coordinates. Street addresses, too. She used to give general directions, but gave up after a while. She probably just forgot--it'd been real long since any of them had left.

A nasty ass storm blew through one day, day after Ellis's twenty-second birthday, and took out one of their barricades on the South end. Ellis had been fixin' a truck with Keith, but Dave'd been down there. Three Tanks had bust on in, flattened Dave into a pancake and took out near about six other folk before they got put down. Ellis hadn't cried over a grave that hard before. His daddy called him a faggot, so he stopped. Cried later, when it was just him and ma.

That was when everything went all to shit.

Folks were arguin', sayin' that they needed to leave. It weren't safe, they couldn't risk another breach like that. Ma was firm that they needed to stay put. Ellis agreed with her on that; none of them had been outside of their little safe zone in years, and they had no way of knowin' if it was worse out there. Plus, as Ellis saw it, they'd been sendin' out a message for ages now that they had a safe place. It wouldn't be right to abandon it now, not when there could be survivors lookin' for a place to rest their heads.

But folks didn't listen to his ma, and they sure as shit didn't listen to him. He backed down too quickly. He didn't like to get into fights like that, not with folks that he saw as his big extended family. Keith sure put up a fight, though, hollerin' and cussin' and spittin' everywhere.

In the end, almost everyone left, until it was just a few folks, ma, and Keith. And Ellis, of course. Things got a little bit easier, and a little bit harder. Scavengin' seemed so much more risky when they could only go out in groups of two, so they only went out when they absolutely needed to. Thankfully, they had a hell of a good stockpile of supplies, and they didn't go through near as much shit. Keith even scrounged up two squeaky-clean t-shirts with the word "Bullshifters" on 'em. Didn't know the meanin' of them, but they'd still been in a neat little cardboard box and they were the right size. Probably the cleanest pieces of clothing they'd ever seen.

Ma got real sick one day. Ellis couldn't bring himself to admit it, but it looked like she weren't gonna make it. The other folks saw her gettin' bad and started suggestin' that they leave--but he couldn't do that. His ma wanted to make this place a safe spot for survivors. He couldn't go surrenderin' that _now_.

The other folks left in the middle of the night. Stole a bunch of shit and hopped a barricade. Keith helped him fix the spot where they jumped over; they damn near broke it. Took 'em the better part of the day, but it was a hell of a lot sturdier. When they got back, his ma had already passed. That was a hard grave to stand over, and they both bawled like lost little kids for days after the fact.

It was real rough to pick up the pieces from there. Ellis tested out the frequency range on the radio until it matched what his ma had written down, then read off the little speech she always gave. Simple enough. She'd always told him that she never bothered sticking around to listen; not many folks would have the ability to answer back. At first, Ellis figured he'd wait around, just in case someone did answer back--but he learned real fast why she never did that.

Sitting up there, alone in the radio tower booth, in near-darkness. No windows, just a single flickering candle and the soft glow of electronics. Silent, holding your breath, praying to a God you don't even know a thing about. Listening to static with eyes locked on the soundboard, finger hoverin' over the button just to respond to anyone. Hope died real fast in that dark little box.

Ellis stopped trying that after three days.

He sometimes wondered if the others had been right. If stayin' was suicide. Keith could usually convince him to stop worryin' about it, but it wasn't always easy to just drop it altogether. They played video games at night, and then they'd take turns walkin' the perimeter of their little safe zone. So long as there weren't any breaches, they were safe.

Today marked another turn for the worse. Their truck, the only vehicle that hadn't been taken by the folks that'd abandoned them, needed a part. A part that they didn't have in the base. Keith told him to just go up on the radio, like he always did. He'd be right back. Easy run.

So Ellis did. Same cheery tone he always put on. "Good mornin', Savannah! This here's a right sunny day up on ol' Boon Hill--that's what we've been callin' it, us Bullshifters. I'm gettin' carried away, though. If y'all can hear me: listen up. We've got us a base. Secure as shit. Lots of food and water, good medical supplies too. Ammo for days, although we don't like usin' it. Shit attracts them zombies." He laughed, rubbing at his nose. "Anyway, we're waitin' for y'all. We don't go turnin' _nobody_ away. If you've been runnin', come have a rest here." Ellis shuffled some papers around, clearing his throat. "Here's the coordinates, and the street signs; I wish I could give y'all directions, I really do, but I ain't never been out of Savannah, and I ain't been out of this base since I was a little kid. Best I can do, sirs and ma-dames."

When Ellis made his way down the ladder and back out to the safe zone proper, he didn't think much about how long it was taking Keith. Keith'd just left, after all. It might take him a few hours. So instead, Ellis went about checking over their supplies, even going so far as to test the strength of some of the walls. He could poke his head over and see the shambling horde outside. Endless. They couldn't make their way over the spikes, and the electric fence was powerful enough to even stop a Tank in its place. Zombies usually left them alone, anyway.

Then he heard the yellin'. Keith was barrelin' towards him and yellin' up a storm. Ellis got the gate open and watched a ton of zombies swarm in before he could shut it again. Eventually all the gurgling and growling stopped, and Keith staggered in, bruised and bleedin' bad, with a broken baseball bat loosely held in a clearly broken hand.

But that weren't the worst of it.

Half his face was melted off.

One of them Spitters had crept up on him, and when he'd turned around, spat its acid right on his face. Ellis'd never seen a sight more horrifying. Keith's left eye was barely danglin' by a thread, with his nose mostly eaten away and his cheek ground down to the bone. Keith wasn't able to speak, holding up the truck part.

Ellis tried.

He tried using every bit of medical knowledge he'd figured out over the years. He tried patching it up, he tried giving Keith painkillers. He even tried a shot of adrenaline, straight to the heart, when Keith stopped breathing. All he was doing was extending the inevitable. Keith was dead before the sun finished setting.

He buried Keith under the bright light of a street lamp, in the park that'd quickly turned into a graveyard over the years. Right next to his ma, with his trucker cap on top. Ellis's heart _ached_. It hurt too much to even cry. He was alone. His ma was long gone, and his best friend, his brother from another mother, was dead.

The part _had_ to be installed, and Ellis sure as shit wasn't about to let it go to waste. Not after Keith'd gone and died for it. He worked on the truck well beyond a reasonable time, not stopping until he finished it. One AM, if he could trust the clock--and usually he couldn't.

Normally, he'd head off to bed--but sleeping was out of the question. Ellis's heart was still hammering away. He just needed to hear somebody else. _Anybody_ else. He'd never been alone before.

His feet dragged a little as he made his way back up to the radio tower. Hard to see where he was going, as poorly lit as that side of the base was, but he needed to go there. Ellis sank into the cozy chair, and after catching his breath and relaxing as much as he could, he pushed the button.

"H-hey folks. This here's Boon Hill....Ellis. My name's Ellis. The base is Boon Hill." His voice was shaking a little. "This base is real safe, and it's got a bunch of supplies. Food, water, medicine. Shelter. I, I don't usually go talkin' this late, and I'm real sorry for that. I'm just..." Ellis let go of the button briefly, sniffling to himself.

If anything, it felt even _lonelier_ now that he was talking on the radio. "My buddy's gone, man. I'm feelin' a sadness I can't describe. But I want y'all to know: none of y'all are alone out there. I'm here for _all_ of you. You may _think_ it's hopeless sometimes, but it ain't all bad. I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave y'all the coordinates. A-and the street names. Y'all can find this base, a-and we can throw y'all a real nice party."

Ellis smiled, blinking back tears. "I feel real stupid right now, cryin' on the radio. Sorry 'bout that, folks. Here's them coordinates for y'all." He read them off, occasionally stopping when he thought he might cry. This time, when he stopped, he waited in the radio tower. He was desperately hoping that anyone, anyone, would answer him. A single soul.

Nobody came through. Ellis's lids grew heavy. It didn't make sense to crawl down to the bunk beds when the chair he was in was so damn cozy.


	2. Breach

Shit was harder after that.

Ellis barely left the room, only dragging himself out to tend to his needs. He clung to the radio like a lifeline, desperate just to hear another voice. He couldn't even _remember_ what his daddy sounded like anymore, but on the worst of nights he'd find himself prayin' that the old sack of shit would come back for him.

Mornings were rough. He kept himself cheery for the morning broadcasts, only to have to leave the room to dry heave as he thought about Keith's melted face. Keith'd been the bullet-proof one. Ellis never got that sayin'; it weren't like people were shootin' each other. Them zombies definitely didn't use guns.

It'd been one of the older fellas that'd called Keith bullet-proof. Probably some old saying that didn't make a lick of sense in the new world. Invincible was more like it. No matter how many times a zombie clawed him, or a Charger punched him, or a Smoker choked him--hell, Ellis'd even seen Keith get thrown by a Tank once. Keith. Didn't. Die. He had scars all over and he couldn't talk right--and Ellis heard some folks say that Keith's head weren't all there no more, neither--but he never needed more than a couple of bandages and some pain pills to get through it.

But Ellis? Shit, Ellis weren't like that. He shied away from pain so bad that he barely ever wanted to head out of safety. Not unless Keith was there, of course. Keith could get him feeling bullet-proof, too. He'd managed to walk off a Hunter attack once; it'd hurt like hell, and he'd been bleedin' bad, but Keith had him laughin' so hard that he almost forget he was hurt.

He caught himself staring out the gate. Zombies usually didn't hang out there--it looked like a killin' floor for the undead, and it just about smelled as bad. The smell seemed to drive them away. Still, he couldn't force himself to open the gate and head out. Hell, he didn't even know how it'd _work_. They always had someone on the inside to open and shut the gate. If he went out, he'd have to keep the gate open--and then he'd have to run to the controls to shut it again.

So he didn't leave. That was easy enough. He had plenty of food to last. Powdered eggs were pretty nasty when he just added water and heated 'em up, but if he followed one of his ma's recipes for pancakes, they weren't half bad. He knew it would go bad eventually, and he only had a few sealed tins, but that was _plenty_ of food. He just needed to last until someone came.

Until, of course, he met his first mouse.

It was _real_ cute, and the first time he'd seen a real animal since the zombies came. It squeaked and bit his hand a few times, but _shit_ , he barely even felt that. If his daddy were around, he'd probably say that they needed to kill it and eat it, but since he weren't around, Ellis just let the little critter go.

He thought nothing of it, went to bed in the radio tower. Woke up, sent out the same message as always, then rubbed at his eyes and headed down to grab a bite to eat. It used to be an office supply store, whatever that was, before ma and a few of the handier folks converted it into a fire-pit kitchen. Groggily, he opened the closet door in the back, and froze.

Mice. Hundreds of them. He stammered out something before trying to shoo them away, mortified. They took off at the sight of him, squeaking and squealing. Ellis shook with an anger he hadn't felt in ages.

Every single container of food was chewed into. Barely anything left. All of it most _definitely_ unsafe to eat, considerin' that more than half of the mice had been covered in Boomer bile. He kicked over an empty powdered eggs container with a bitter curse, tears welling up. It weren't _fair_.

He went lookin' for the mice, then. Didn't know what he'd do, he just knew that he had to get them back. Clever sons of bitches had all but vanished. Ellis reluctantly went back to the supply closet and cleaned it out, chucking the tainted food over the wall. Whole place needed a deep cleaning, too, with or without food.

Ellis spent the better half of the day cleaning the place from floor to ceiling, cursing and spitting out cleaner fluid. His stomach ached; he hadn't gone a day without food since he was fourteen, and he sure didn't like returnin' to that feeling after so long. That settled it, then. He'd have to go out for food.

Luckily, even with how much shit the last batch of folks had taken with them, there were still plenty of guns. He'd only shot a few of them, but he was a hell of a shot with an AK-47. He grabbed one, then grabbed a crowbar and headed over to the gate controls. As much as he liked the thought of carrying an axe, he needed the crowbar in case he found a crate to pry into.

The gate creaked open, still faithfully functional after years of service, and he headed out. Had to remember to pick up some shit for killin' rats, too. He knew that folks had been worried about them, but no one'd wanted to go out and risk their lives for it. He realized that the mice had probably never gotten in before 'cause they'd always had people goin' in and out of the place, with the horde always swarmin' around. Mice probably got too scared to risk scurryin' in.

"Man, I hate these things." His jaw clenched shut as he remembered that he was alone. Ellis gripped his crowbar tightly, swinging it into the eye socket of one of the infected. _Yeah, real hardline stance there, Ellis, bet loads of folks love 'em._ He sighed, looking around the street. This area'd been picked clean. He knew that they usually had to travel a decent distance to find any food. Of course, they'd also had a decent enough stockpile that there was never a real urgent need to get food. Not like this.

He rounded a corner, only to bump into one of the old traps that they'd setup. Pretty simple shit: just an old car alarm hooked up to a battery, tripped if a wire was pulled. It'd lure zombies to one spot, letting the whole group go in the opposite direction to easily and safely pluck up supplies. Used to be fun as hell to stand by the gate and mow down the zombies when they finally caught up.

Not so fun now, as Ellis nearly _flew_ back to the base. There weren't no welcomin' committee for him. He had twenty seconds to get the gate closed before that horde'd get smart and come after him.

Even with his boots on, he still slipped around on the guts that Keith'd left out in front of the gate. He cursed himself for being lazy about it; that shit needed to be cleared to the side. Seemed silly to be worryin' about that now, but he knew he was supposed to be thinkin' a good two or three steps ahead of himself. That's how folks survived.

That horde was gettin' real close when he made it to the gate controls, his hands shaking as he scrambled to hit the button. One problem. Gate was jammed. Ellis's eyes shot up, trying to diagnose the malfunction. Looked like a severed zombie arm got caught up in the gears or some shit--definitely not something he could fix with the horde already shoving through the gate. He gave himself a second to count them; not enough bullets to gun down the whole mess, and if he got caught swingin' his crowbar, he risked getting grabbed by one of them meaner zombies.

Ellis looked over to the house he'd always known to be the safest building in the place--but there was no way he'd be able to run that distance. He turned tail and started up to the radio tower, only turning to rain bullets down on the zombies when he heard their harsh footfalls hitting the stairs.

Planning ahead always had been a problem of his.

He slammed the door shut behind him, then shoved one of the unusable soundboards in front of the door. Ellis looked around the room quickly, heart sinking as his head caught up. That natural adrenaline couldn't cover up how shit he felt; that was the _only_ _way_ _out_. Them zombies were poundin' on the door, too, harder than he'd _ever_ heard someone pound on a door before. Had to be at least a dozen of them at the door, with dozens more behind them.

Ellis backed up against the far wall, clutching his gun. They weren't breaking down the door just yet, but the soundboard didn't completely block the door. He jumped when he saw a hand punch through the door, shaking as the bleeding appendage swung around wildly. He took aim and shot, watching the arm go limp. Not more than a minute later, the wild thrashing of the zombies ripped the body back, another hand swiftly replacing it.

Each new zombie that he caught a glimpse of, he shot. It was at least keeping them from breaking the door down any further. Didn't seem like their numbers were going down any, though. Frustrated tears pricked at his eyes. He was counting down in his head, watching each bullet fly. He'd heard that most folks liked to keep one bullet, just in case. He didn't know if he had the balls to do that shit.

The tears were streaming now. He'd used his last bullet on a zombie, somehow hoping that the rest would leave. No such luck; another hand burst through the hole like he hadn't just used up all of his ammo. Part of him was hoping to see a Spitter's horrible neck craning through the little glints of the outdoors that he could see between the zombie's flailing. Seemed real fittin' to die like that.

No doubt in his mind that he was a dead man now. His eyes drifted over to the radio, wondering if he should get up to send one final message. Shit, he didn't even know what he'd say. What if there was some survivor comin' to the base right now, hopin' to find food and shelter? It wouldn't be right to leave them thinkin' that this place was still safe. It obviously weren't.

He almost wanted to give up on that. Almost. But he couldn't go disappointin' his ma now. There had to be survivors out there still. There was no way that they'd been the only ones left. Ellis struggled up to his feet, one eye on the door as he edged closer to the radio.

"H-hey folks, I'm real, _real_ sorry about the noise." He had to speak up louder than he usually did; the zombies were just so dang _loud_ compared to him. "I ran into a little spot of trouble here. Some mice came and ate up all our food, and the gate's jammed. Whole mess of zombies got in." Ellis laughed weakly. "Well, guess y'all know that. Pretty obvious with all that noise, huh?" He swallowed thickly. "W-well, this here base still has a _lot_ of good shit. Safe house--a real one, with a CEDA door, and tons of guns. If y'all can get the zombie arm out of the gate, it's real secure, too. Lasted for fifteen years. Here's...here's the coordinates, folks."

But, as always, there was no response on the radio. Ellis sank back against the far wall again, his tears long since dried. Hell, he'd been hoping that the zombies would've broken in and got him by now. But they still weren't doin' shit. He was getting _tired_.

Everyone was always sayin' that they wanted to die in their sleep, right? Least painful way to go. He hugged his gun close to himself, looking away from the door. The zombie that'd been trying to somehow get him with just its arm had succeeded in sawin' its own arm off from the pressure of draggin' it against the busted door. Blood was sprayin' everywhere. Ellis couldn't stomach to look anymore.

_Good night, Savannah._


	3. Bleak

"You know, you can eat ramen noodles without even cooking them when they come in a brick."

"Really?"

"Yup. Used to snack on 'em when I was playing Super Mario Brothers."

"Damn. Here I was snacking on mac n' cheese and popcorn. That sounds _way_ easier."

Ellis groggily opened his eyes, the sight of a flickering fire a warm--if not confusing--welcome. He realized that he wasn't inside of a building anymore, a suspicion confirmed when a particularly nasty smelling breeze kicked in. His gaze drifted, falling on one of the people that'd been speaking.

_People?_

He shot up, nearly yelping. Two younger looking black people--maybe around his age, actually, he always was a bad judge of age. The dude looked friendly, almost as friendly as good old Coach'd been. Lady didn't look as friendly--looked more like she'd seen some serious _shit_.

"Oh, you're up!" The guy was smiling at him, offering a bowl of some kind of soup. Ellis sure wasn't about to say no to it. "My name's Louis, and this is Rochelle."

Ellis already had a mouthful of noodles by the time Louis finished talking. "Ellish." He swallowed down the noodles, grinning broadly. "Sorry 'bout that. My name's Ellis."

Rochelle cleared her throat. "So, we heard your broadcast. Is..." She trailed off, looking around. "Is this " _Boon Hill_ "? 'Cause we were...kind of expecting more than this."

A flash of guilt made him freeze up. _Shit_. "It...it was a lot more than this. Honest." He caught her eye and felt even worse, like that time he'd ate a whole box of cookies. They'd tasted _real_ good, and he hadn't really understood back then that supplies like that were limited.

He squirmed, staring down at his bowl of noodles. "A lot of folks said it'd be better if we went travelin', a-and some of us stayed, 'cause it'd be better to stay where it was safe, right?" He looked up. Rochelle was eating, but Louis was looking at him. "Well, my ma got real sick, and the rest of the folks bolted, 'cept for my buddy Keith." Ellis felt a lump in his throat. He bit his lip and went back to eating, sniffling.

"I'm sorry." Louis scooted over to Ellis's side of the fire, patting him on the knee. "How old were you when all of this started?"

Ellis collected himself a little, keeping his eyes on the spoon he had. Lord knows he'd start crying if he looked someone in the eye. "I was eight." He heard the little inhale from both of them and cringed. "It ain't like I didn't know what was going on! I was a smart kid. Serious." He finished eating, setting the bowl down. "I'm real happy somebody heard the message, though. I mean, I never lost hope. Had to keep the message goin', and even if shit got real bad here, folks had to know that we had weapons and a legitimate safe place to be."

Louis just chuckled at that. "I like this guy. Ellis, right?" He waited for Ellis to nod, grinning. "Well, we got the message a few days ago, up North. Figured we'd check it out, even if it sounded too good to be true." He laughed, waving at the gate. "Fixing that was a pain. I know how to fix computers, but the physical stuff's always intimidating. We got it cleared out and fixed, but _man_ were there a lot of zombies here."

"I thought you were dead, honestly." Rochelle smirked. "Door looked broken in just enough for a Jockey to get in, and you were laying there with a gun in your lap. Found plenty of bodies like that." She didn't seem too bothered by it. Ellis figured that was just 'cause they didn't know each other yet. "But we got the door open, and you were still breathing, so we hauled your ass down here to the fire."

He nodded slowly as he soaked in the info. Pretty damn embarrassing now that he thought about it. "Yeah, I had a bit of a mouse problem. Ate up all the food I got stored up, so I had to go out to get some more. But that gate's only got controls that work on the inside, so somebody's gotta stay behind to operate 'em. So, uh-shit--I mean shoot, sorry ma'am." Rochelle was lookin' at him real weird now. Ellis had almost forgotten what it was like to talk to folks that weren't his ma or his friend. "I bet I sound like a real fool now. I didn't see that the gate got gummed up, so I bolted up to the radio and used up all my ammo, and uh, yeah. Got stuck up there, nothin' to do but sleep I guess."

The two of them were sharin' a look now, and Ellis started worryin' that they were gonna up and leave or start yellin'. Instead, Rochelle _totally_ surprised him: her face melted into the biggest grin and she just started _laughin'_ , with Louis joinin' right in. It broke whatever tension had been in the air, making Ellis smile a little.

"You're a hell of a brave guy, Ellis." Rochelle laughed, shaking her head. "Falling asleep with a horde banging at your door? I've never heard of that." She picked up a machete and set to work on cleaning it with a rag--looked like she'd been doing it before he woke up. Or before the food got done bein' cooked. "Well, just from what I can tell, this is defensible. I'd have to look at your power supply to be sure, but..." She gestured to a part of the fencing with her machete. "Electric fence? Pretty high walls? A few CEDA doors? Cache of weapons and medical supplies? This place is one of the best I've seen."

Ellis perked up a little. "One of the best?" He smiled, tentative and hopeful. "So--there's others like this, right? I mean, of course there is, y'all just said it, a-and there's two of you, too! Ain't nobody survivin' by walkin' around outside for that long." He looked over at Louis, who was suddenly not very interested in looking at him. "...Right?"

"...I guess Rochelle should tell you." Louis grimaced. "I'm not very good at delivering bad news."

 

* * *

 

 

It'd been some soberin' info to take, but after she delivered it, they went about clearin' the place of bodies. Nasty work, but it was better to get it done before the smell started gettin' nasty. Didn't take long in Savannah's heat to get them bodies smellin' like raw sewage, a smell which he'd only had the unfortunate opportunity to experience once to know that zombies at _least_ weren't as bad as that.

Now, as he settled into a bunk bed that he hadn't used in nearly a week, his mind wouldn't shut the hell up. He smiled at Louis, asleep in the bunk across from him. Max used to like using that one. Real son of a bitch. Ellis was glad that Louis was there, really. Dude just seemed like a hell of a fun guy.

Rochelle was above him, already sound asleep. A bit weird to see her hand danglin', but she'd told him to tap it if he needed her up and ready to kill shit. She seemed on top of things. Bullet-proof.

Keith always slept up there, too.

He couldn't even get his eyes to close. He started countin' the patches on the mattress above him in a feeble attempt to tire himself out, but that just weren't an option. Not when his mind was stuck on what Ro' had told him.

Louis and Ro' hadn't seen a safe group in _seven years._ It'd been _ten years_ since they'd seen an actual _base_. Apparently up North they got snow real bad. Nothing like the little dusting that they got in Savannah sometimes. Serious shit. _Feet_ of snow. Enough snow that the zombies could claw their way over any wall. A lot of safe houses hadn't been built to last the winter, either, so they caved in with snow.

A lot of the zombies died, but the ones that didn't were real tough. And folks were mean as hell, too. Food was scarce, so folks had no problems with killin' to keep their shit safe. Lot of cannibals, too. Louis'd started cryin' when Ro' got to talkin' about Bill. Old man that'd been with them, 'Nam vet--whatever that meant. Military shit, somethin' that the government did.

The last base they'd been to had been run by cannibals. They thought they were safe, until Bill came crawlin' into their tent with his legs sawed off. They liked to keep the people they harvested alive as long as possible, get as much food out of them as they could before they had to worry about rot and maggots. They'd tried to drag Bill out of there, but when it was clear that he wasn't gonna survive, they had to kill him.

Ro' had to use her machete to do it, too. It'd been Bill's machete, and choppin' through the neck weren't a clean death, but they'd wanted it to be as fast and quiet as they could. Neither of 'em ate for a few days after the fact. Ellis didn't wanna know if they ate while they were at the base.

Then they ran into another group. Group of four, real antsy, too. None of them wanted to have any more people with them. Too risky, or some shit. They ate a tense meal together and traded supplies before partin' ways. Louis warned them about the cannibals, and apparently they changed directions.

Other than that, the two of them had just been travelin'. Louis had been a teenager when this shit started, with a love for computers that made Ellis a little envious. Somethin' about bein' able to work on the programs inside of machines instead of just fixin' the parts sounded awesome. And Louis had played video games _before_ all this shit went down. Shit like that was _cool_.

Ro' had been in some accelerated school program--real bright, set to go to college when she turned fifteen. Ellis'd only heard about college; that had to be some real smart shit. She wanted to be a reporter--or a lawyer. Both sounded like serious work, but he could buy that she'd be into it. She had a voice that sounded just like one of the reporters in the movies Ellis'd seen, too. Official soundin'.

Shit, he couldn't understand why they felt sorry for _him_. They hadn't looked sorry that everyone he knew'd died. Well, Louis did, but Ro' only seemed upset when she heard how young he was. Ain't like he'd had a lot of shit going on before the zombies came. He'd just barely been startin' out in school, really. Didn't know a thing about what he wanted to do, or what he'd even _be_ doin'. They'd had their shit together and had plans. Hell, he couldn't even imagine what it was like for them older folks that already had lives and had to stop 'em dead for these zombies.

Ellis stifled a yawn, cringing. It weren't fair for him right _now_ , that's for damn sure. He wanted to sleep, and so did his body. It was his brain that wasn't gettin' the picture. It wanted to keep gripin' about shit that couldn't be changed and shit that couldn't be helped. He'd figured that closin' his eyes would help, but all that did was make him picture the zombies from the night before.

His eyes were still droopin', even if he wasn't feelin' particularly up to sleepin'. Eventually, he couldn't even force his eyes to stay open. Ellis reluctantly settled into the least comfortable and content sleep that he'd ever had, the weight of Keith's death and his ma's passing _nothing_ compared to the grim reality that things really weren't any better elsewhere.

He'd never hoped so hard that his gut would be wrong before. If their little outpost had been the best that the new world had to offer, then things were lookin' mighty bleak for the human race.


	4. Chapter 4

"Good mornin' and uh, cone-itchy-wah?"

"Konnichiwa."

"Right, what he said! Mornin' Savannah!" Ellis was grinnin' ear to ear. Louis spent a good part of the morning trying to teach him how to say " _hello_ " in Japanese, just in case anybody spoke that in the area. Ellis kind of doubted it, but it was a nice touch.

"This is Boon Hill, and we're workin' on gettin' our food supplies back up! This here base's got plenty of water and guns, though, and a whole mess of safety measures. Guaranteed safest spot for miles. Y'all're more than welcome to come stay here for as long as you want." He shared a little grin with Louis. "So here's our coordinates!"

His mood was _completely_ different from what it had been. Just havin' people around made everything better. Louis was just as excited to have a place to stay; as much as he liked traveling--somethin' about " _good cardio_ ", which Ellis didn't get--he liked the thought of sittin' still.

Ro' wasn't quite warmin' up to the idea. She was pacin' around the whole damn base, checkin' every section of the fence and lookin' for even the tiniest structural weakness. She had one of them Sharpie markers with her, too, and every now and then she'd draw a big "X" somewhere on the wall. By the time Ellis and Louis were out of the radio room, the whole perimeter was covered in markings.

"See all that?" She put a hand on her hip. "We need to reinforce those. And we need to divert some wires, too. Too many wires that are totally naked on the surface. All it'd take is one Jockey jumping too high to risk shorting out all of the electricity."

Ellis scratched behind his ear. "Well shit, I didn't know that. I mean: shoot." He grinned. "Sorry, ma'am."

She looked at him oddly before shaking her head. "Ellis, sweetie, it's alright to swear in front of me." Ro' smirked. "There's zombies. A swear word's not about to offend me after I've been puked on by a Boomer."

"Yeah, well, it's real important to try and keep civilized, y'know." He shrugged. "But, shit, I get what you're sayin'. Ma always said I should be polite to folks I don't know yet."

"You know our names, and we know yours." Ro' handed him a shovel. "That's about as well as anybody can know anyone else with the world like this. Now, come on: we've got wires to bury."

He'd never heard of buryin' wires before, but apparently it was important. Somehow. Ellis wasn't about to argue it. Not at first, anyway. Hard work weren't somethin' new to him, after all. A few hours into the work, however, with no break in sight and no end in sight, and he couldn't help it: he had to know why it was so important.

"What makes buryin' wires safer?" He couldn't seem to get Ro's attention, so he turned to Louis, instead. "I mean, ain't they just as safe on this side of the fence as they'd be a few inches underground?"

Louis leaned back to stretch, groaning. "Well, I never really got it, either, but, I remember my dad used to talk about it a lot. Basically, when they're underground, they're better protected against a whole list of problems. Like..." He trailed off, as if he'd forgotten. "Well, I'm sure there's lots of good reasons!"

"You don't want them exposed because someone could trip on them, or a mouse could chew them. It's pretty easy for the shock from that to kill whomever touched it, and the resulting damage destroys the whole grid." Rochelle looked over at both of them, shaking her head. "And unless one of you two is an electrician that knows how to rewire a whole grid, I think we'd be pretty screwed."

 

* * *

 

 

Louis was a little bit older, but he was still a _riot_ to hang out with. As soon as they finished diggin', Louis was off doin' some light joggin' around the base. Ellis joined him, 'cause Louis made a hell of a convincin' argument for it. Staying in shape meant possibly being able to outrun the zombies. He'd naturally been able to keep in shape and do just that by the nature of them traveling everywhere, but he didn't want to slow down just because they had a base to stay at.

That blew Ellis's mind. They never stopped anywhere for more than a few _hours_. Even slept out in the open a few times! Ellis couldn't imagine doin' that. He'd heard all sorts of nightmare stories from folks when they headed out, and the few runs he'd been on had been equally awful. He couldn't imagine being in a position where there'd be no option to sleep safely.

It sounded frightening, now that he thought about it. Runnin' all day, not knowing if there'd even be a safe house for them to stop at. Probably couldn't even sleep for more than a few hours, even if they did find one. Shit, if there were cannibals runnin' around, they probably took turns sleepin' and left in a hurry. No time to play, or goof off, or relax. Just survivin'.

That weren't a way to live.

So when night came, Ellis figured he'd really impress both of 'em. He pulled out a guitar and strummed along to some old songs he knew; a few Midnight Riders songs that he _sort of_ remembered and an ACDC song that he _kind of_ knew the lyrics to. It weren't nothin' amazing, but they both just about lit up listenin' to it. Ro' even mentioned that neither of 'em had heard music since before Bill went.

The real treat came when he wheeled out one of the TVs.

It took him some time to get the wires all setup, but once he got the SNES up and runnin', they were all tradin' off to play games. Louis seemed to get into it way more than either of them did, always taggin' in as Luigi and absolutely killin' it. Kind of felt like havin' a big bro that knew how to beat the game. Ro' needed some help figurin' out the controls at first, but once she nailed it, she was holdin' her own.

Eventually they ran out of lives, and Ro' was the only one mature enough to get them all off to sleep. They still spent a good hour or so chattin' when they got to their bunks, laughing about the game and teasin' each other for how far they got. Sure beat the hell out of how miserable Ellis'd been the night before. Weren't hard to fall asleep when his cheeks were sore from smilin' so much.

 

* * *

 

 

Ro' barely gave them time to do the mornin' radio message before she had them all out scroungin' for food. Ellis'd tried to tell her that someone needed to stay back to shut the gate, but she was _adamant_ that they stick together. Her tone'd been almost chillin'; Ellis just had to think about what she'd said about Bill to get why. No leavin' folks alone.

So that meant that Ellis was constantly lookin' over his shoulder, terrified of alerting another horde. He'd just barely met these people, and he didn't want to end up dyin'--or worse, seein' one of _them_ die. They seemed like nice folks; too nice to be riskin' their butts just 'cause he hadn't known shit about mice.

He pocketed a few containers of rat poison at a convenience store, along with a few rat traps. He had no clue how they worked, but everything had instructions. Couldn't be that hard, right? Zombies weren't in the area today, either; usually all it took was one little thing movin' around to get the whole horde excited, which meant that they'd probably found some bird to chase or somethin'.

Unfortunately, there really wasn't a lot of food to be found. A few bags of flour and sugar, which Ro' insisted on grabbin'. Somethin' about bein' able to make real simple food with it. Two cans of beans were tucked away under a shelf, too--probably fell while some group was eagerly collectin' cans on an early run, and no one'd thought to duck down and check when they'd already had a decent enough haul.

It was a start, although he realized that they'd probably need to take the truck to go get more supplies. Fifteen years of pickin' Savannah clean'd do that. It made him wonder if they'd screwed over any other survivors with their base. Folks could've been travelin' through Savannah and found it to be a resource wasteland 'cause of them.

The trip back was uneventful right up until they got to the gate. Some giant dude was standin' in front of it, shoutin' for them to open up. Covered in tattoos with a shaved head and wavin' a shotgun around like it was nothin'. Dude seemed _real_ oblivious, too, 'cause he didn't even notice the three of them standin' behind him.

"Uh, sir?" Ellis got his attention, watchin' as the man turned to look at all of them. "Were you wantin' in?"

The giant dude's mouth twitched. "Oh. So no one _was_ home after all, huh?" He looked back at the gate again. "That's Boon Hill, right?" He looked back at them, watching the three of them nod. "Good! So I _was_ right!" He laughed. "I need help. The guy I'm with got stuck about a half mile back, and I can't reach him on my own."

Rochelle didn't seem impressed. "Uh-huh. Do you seriously think that we believe for a second that you'd just leave one person behind?"

"C'mon, Ro', what if his buddy's hurt?" Ellis couldn't believe it. Did she think he was trickin' them or something? He seemed like a nice enough guy. "Sir? What's your name?"

"Francis." He scratched his head, blinking owlishly at all three of them. "Uh, are you gonna help me out or not? 'Cause I can just go get his ass if you won't help. I thought your motto on the radio was about helping people."

Ellis bobbed his head automatically, ignoring the little groan that came from Ro'. "Yeah, that's right. Sorry, Francis, let us just drop off these supplies and we can go get your friend." He walked up to the gate, then froze. "Uh...wait a second." Shit. "This ain't supposed to be closed, the button to open it is on the inside."

Louis coughed. "Yeah, about that." He walked over and grabbed what'd looked like a piece of frayed rope, tugging on it. The gate creaked open. "I figured out how to rig it so that we can pull this to open it in an emergency. You know, in case no one's inside to open it?" He shrugged, smiling when he saw how much that impressed Ellis.

"That's nice." Francis watched them walk inside, tapping his foot. "I'd really like to hurry. You know. No rush. Just a bunch of friggin' _zombies_ out there, probably eating the guy I had to leave back there. No big deal."

Ro' threw an irritated glare over at Francis. "You know we don't owe you shit, right? Your friend's probably dead already. Never leave someone all alone in a dangerous place." She still didn't sound like she bought it for a second. Her eyes drifted down to his chest. "That vest looks stupid."

It was hilarious to see Francis _deflate_ when she said it.

With the foodstuff safely stored away and a bit of the rat poison setup nearby, they headed back out. Ellis had to admit that he was a little nervous. He'd never seen a dude with that many tattoos before. Sure, Ellis had one, but that'd been 'cause all the other guys his age had convinced ol' Coach to get them matchin' tats. Made them look tough. Those looked like they were done before the zombies came. Tons of 'em. Some of 'em reminded Ellis of the movies he'd seen that involved gangs.

_Now_ he got why Ro' didn't trust this guy. Ellis was willin' to trust just about anybody, but she had good reason not to trust nobody. Thoughts of this bein' a trap made him all the more glad that they were all armed. If it came to a stand-off, he weren't too sure that he had it in him to point a gun at another person.


	5. The Pit

"So, how far is this _"friend"_ of yours?" Ro' walked next to Francis, keeping one eye trained on him the entire time. Louis was on the other side of the biker lookin' dude, although he was more focused on keepin' a sharp eye out for zombies.

Francis just let out an extra long exasperated noise before shrugging. "Hell, I don't know. He fell in a sewer. It was kind of funny when it first happened, but some of the rubble's got him stuck." He scratched his ear. "I mean, it's still _really_ funny, but it's a pain in the ass, too."

"Y'all heard my message, right?" Ellis could almost feel how tense things were. Ro' looked like she just wanted to shoot him and avoid the incoming trap altogether, while Louis looked real scared. "The one I send out every mornin'?"

"Oh, sure." He looked back at Ellis, smirking. " _Lots_ of supplies. Well, no food, but _lots_ of supplies." Francis sighed. "I wanted food." He patted his stomach, as if emphasizing the fact that yes, that was where food went.

Ellis was kind of gettin' the feelin' that Francis weren't real bright.

Ro' jumped when Francis smacked her arm; the big guy went running ahead, surprisin' all three of them. If it were a trap, it weren't a well thought-out one. Even Ellis knew that it was a bad idea to show your back to potentially hostile folks.

He ended up leadin' the way, since the others just seemed too shocked at how Francis was actin' to react properly. It seemed like he hadn't been lyin', since he was standin' next to a big hole in the ground, but the real eye-catcher had to be the dead Tank not more than ten feet away from said hole.

"Did y'all take that down?" Ellis whistled at the little " _yep_ " he got in response. "Ho-ly _shit_ , it's hard as hell to take down one of them with just two dudes."

"Francis?! Who the hell's with you?"

Francis leaned over to look down in the hole, grinning. "Ohhh, _there_ you are. You're just lucky I found these guys before it got dark out. Or before a Jockey got to you." The man trapped below shouted a few nasty as hell words back up at Francis, makin' the big guy's grin grow even wider. "Careful, all that crying's gonna make these Boon Hill people think you're a Witch."

The three of them tentatively got closer, with Ellis being the only one to peer in. He realized the second that he did it that they'd refrained just in case Francis might be ready to push them in, but it was too late to back off now.

All he saw below was one guy in a ratty gray sweater, covered in water and muck. "He's real lucky; that's a storm drain, that ain't no sewer!" Ellis grinned and waved at the guy. "It'd smell a whole lot worse if it were a sewer. My buddy Keith got stuck in one of them."

"No kidding?" Francis looked over at him with a grin, ignoring the protests comin' from below. Guess they weren't the best of friends if this was how urgent he was about rescuin' the other guy.

"Serious. Can of peaches fell in the sewer, and they all drew straws. Keith got down there, and as soon as he did, a Tank showed up; flipped this old semi right on the sewer grate. It took them a good two days to figure out how to get Keith out of there, and let me tell you: he stank somethin' _fierce_ for a week after." Ellis laughed at the memory, lighting up when Francis laughed along with him. Shit, it wasn't the _best_ story about Keith--but it kind of made it feel like Keith was still alive, in a way.

"That's real _heartwarming_." The guy down below sounded--and looked--pissed off. "Is somebody gonna lend me a hand down here?!"

Francis grunted, then looked the group over. "Well, I've got an idea. How's about me and hat-boy here go down and dig him out, and you two stand watch?" He saw them both fidgeting and scowled. "What? If you've got a better idea, let's hear it. I don't feel like waiting around for another Tank."

 

* * *

 

 

It turned out that getting down there was half of the problem. It wasn't as if the Tank's wild thrashing had created a perfect ramp for them or somethin'. They had to scrounge around for a ladder at a local supply store, and even then it looked to be the least sturdy thing that Ellis'd ever trusted his life to before.

Still, he got down into the storm drain, relaxing only once his boots were on sturdy enough ground to warrant feelin' safe. It hadn't rained in a few days, makin' the place thankfully pretty dry--but awfully musty smellin'. He felt bad for the guy that'd been stuck. Ellis crouched down to get a better look at the rubble, pulling a flashlight from his bag.

"Good lord." He looked up, tensing briefly when he saw that guy's face. Somethin' about them eyes really took him by surprise. Ellis cleared his throat, smilin'. "Anything hurtin', sir?"

The guy just gave him a flat work. "Nope."

Ellis looked him over; most of his left side was stuck in the rubble. It was easy enough to see his leg partially exposed, but his arm was clearly buried pretty deep within. Just from what he could tell, the Tank'd probably busted through a weak part of the road to cause it to get all wrecked like that.

Francis just started moving the rubble, motioning to Ellis to join in. Most of the pieces were pretty small, although a few took the two of them to move. The guy's leg looked alright--not hurt too bad, at least. He'd seen worse. Usually on Keith. That arm was stuck in there bad, though, and most of the rubble there wasn't fully detached. That meant tryin' to wedge something in there to pry it up enough to pull him loose.

Even after just about _beggin_ ' Ro', she totally refused to give up her machete. Ellis had to improvise. He wandered around the storm drain, eventually comin' up on an old pipe. Francis grabbed it, too, resultin' in both of them tuggin' at it. When that didn't work, Francis started buttin' his shotgun against it until it gave way.

Satisfied, Ellis headed back over. "So, what's your name, sir? If y'don't mind me askin'--this here's gonna take a while." He gave a small grin as he wedged the piece of pipe into the only pocket of space he could find. The guy didn't answer at first--probably stressin' about how close that pipe was to his hand.

"Nick. Name's Nick." He kept tuggin' at his arm as Ellis tried to hoist the rubble up. Even when Francis joined in, it was barely budgin'. The sound of boots hittin' the concrete behind them made them all look back. Ro' rolled her eyes and joined in, apparently sick of waitin' around.

With their combined effort, Nick was finally able to yank his arm free. It looked all tore up, with tons of scratches and bruises. It weren't broken, but from how he was carryin' it, it was _useless_. Nick was gingerly touchin' at it and cringin'--the aloof smirk that'd been on Francis's face was completely gone.

" _Woah_. That looks pretty bad." Francis winced. "Why didn't you say something?"

Nick just grunted. "What, like you'd go any _faster_?" He rubbed at his arm, then sighed. "Boon Hill actually exists, right? You assholes aren't just pulling our legs?"

Ellis perked up, shaking his head. "Serious! Just about born and raised there, Nick. Spent all fifteen years of these zombies right at that there base."

"I didn't believe it, either." Ro' shrugged, smirking at the two guys. "But it's real. Defensible, too. I just arrived there yesterday with Louis."

"Oh yeah?" Nick snorted. Unimpressed lookin'. Ellis almost felt offended. "And how many guys do they have?"

Silence. Ro' just looked at Ellis awkwardly.

Oh. That was why he was unimpressed.

Ellis squirmed a little, rubbin' the back of his neck. "It's just me. But, shit man, it's real easy to operate the place with a skeleton crew, and it's even easier to keep it stocked. We used to have a good fifty-some-odd folks runnin' around. Now that was a pain in the _butt_ to keep stocked."

Before anyone could pipe up, Louis choked out a cry from above. Rochelle just about flew up the ladder, with Francis followin' right after. Nick scrambled up--and as he did, Ellis's eyes caught movement in the blackness of the storm drain. Zombies. "Oh, shit man, oh, _shit_!"

As Ro' blasted the Smoker's face off and checked to make sure that Louis was okay, Francis started shooting down into the horde below. Nick struggled to get up with just one good arm, staring down at the horde uncertainly. Ellis was just about out of the storm drain when his boot kicked out, missing the next rung and instead kicking out the ladder from under him.

Before he could even yelp, two hands shot out: Nick's good arm was strainin', while Francis was holdin' his wrist pretty easily. Between the two of them, they dragged him up, one of the zombies squealin' in outrage as it narrowly missed Ellis's boot by a hair.

The five of them took off running, with Francis and Ro' shooting back at the horde the whole way. Louis was leading the way--real good thing, too, 'cause Ellis sure hadn't been payin' attention to the route they'd taken. He had to remember to do that next time, in case they were ever in a situation like this again and needed to hurry back.

Once they got the gate open, Ellis ran to the controls. He'd never been more nervous, watching this group that he barely knew anythin' about. They were mowin' down the horde like it was nothin', but lord knows he kept worryin' that somethin' would go wrong. A Tank bustin' through the gate and smashin' 'em. That was runnin' through his mind on repeat. One bad swing from one of them big motherfuckers could kill a grown man.

But the gate closed, and only a couple of little zombies squirmed in at the end, easily taken care of. Ellis sighed in relief, a huge weight lifted right off his shoulders as he realized that the whole group was just fine. Well, sort of fine. They still had injuries to treat, after all. But nobody was dead. That was what mattered.

 

* * *

 

 

They didn't have much to share, but it was enough to give them all at least a plate of food. Ro' made some absolutely _mediocre_ tastin' pancakes with the supplies they got earlier--fillin', but barely edible. Ellis'd never missed those powdered eggs more than when he was chokin' down fried flour-sugar-water-cakes.

Nick and Francis were both shovelin' down food. Poor guys'd been starvin', from the looks of it. Francis had explained that they'd been headin' South, 'cause most places up North were picked clean. Nick'd said something about tryin' to go to an island, since the infected seemed to have trouble crossin' any water that required swimmin'.

Ellis looked Nick's arm over. It was up in a nice sling now, hidin' the worst of the damage. Louis had some bandages on his chest from where the Smoker'd managed to claw him open a little. Lucky it was just one of them; their claws weren't so bad, even after a few minutes of pawin' at their victim.

Francis sobered up a little to talk about a young lady they'd had with 'em. Zoey. She'd fight with Nick every day about _everythin'_. Very much so against goin' on an island--she wanted to stay and help others. Ellis decided right then that she was a good person. Of course, they wouldn't be bringin' her up unless she was dead.

The fact that she'd been shot by a trigger-happy group made Ellis physically ill.


	6. Rain

Morning brought a thunderstorm so fierce that Ellis just about wanted to curse the skies for openin' up at all. He didn't even bother running up to send out a radio message; the signal'd be too weak to begin with. That was the excuse Ellis had in his head, anyway. He only felt a little bad about missin' a day.

Ro' didn't appear to mind the downpour one bit. She'd run around settin' up buckets everywhere, insistin' that it was never a bad idea to have rain water collected. It surprised the hell out of him that Louis was still doin' his joggin', too, like the lightnin' and thunder didn't even bug him.

Ellis just watched from the window, grimacing. He hadn't expected Francis to go out there, but quickly looked away when he saw the big guy start strippin' down. He could hear Ro' protestin' about it, but then he heard a bunch of laughter. A shy glance out the window confirmed that all three of them were stripped down, makin' Ellis blush beet red.

"Surprised you're not out there, heehaw."

He jumped, looking over at Nick. "Well, I mean, I ain't real fond of gettin' all my shit soaked to the bone. They're just gonna track in mud or somethin'." Not to mention that it had to be at least _ten_ different public decency sins. Ellis couldn't remember all of the rules that his daddy'd set down for the outpost, but he clearly remembered that no one was allowed to be nude in front of everybody. It weren't right.

"Uh-huh." Nick was pulling shit out of his pockets. Pack of cigarettes, deck of cards, a tiny bottle of somethin', a little cardboard box of somethin', and a knife. "Do you not bathe here or something?"

"What? No!" Ellis looked mortified. "Once a month, just like everybody else. We got an old tub that ain't got any leaks in it; just pour in two buckets of water and wash up with that."

Nick just chuckled, shaking his head. "Yeah, that's nice, kiddo. Do you see how hard it's raining? You go out in this right now, you can wash up in no time. Take your clothes out there too and, well they won't be clean, but, they won't be caked with guts and blood and shit."

_Shit, I never thought of it like that before._ Ellis's brow furrowed, reluctantly taking his cap off. "Y'all ain't gonna laugh at me for bein' naked, are you?" He grimaced when Nick laughed at him right there--worse, the Northerner reached up and ruffled his hair, too.

"We're all gonna be naked, sport. Who cares? Besides." Nick removed his sling with a grunt, motioning to his limp arm. "I'm gonna need help. You help me out, I'll let you borrow my soap."

"Soap?"

"Oh _Christ_ , you're kidding me, right?"

 

* * *

 

 

Well, that'd been _somethin'_.

As soon as Ro' had seen the bar of soap, it'd ended up bein' passed around to the whole group. Even got used on their clothes. Weren't much of it left by the end of it, and Nick whined louder than Ellis'd thought it possible for a man to whine when he saw the sorry excuse for a bar.

Ellis had to admit, it felt nice to be clean, even if he was still awkwardly hunched over and tryin' to be modest. Both Ro' and Francis didn't appear to care too much; Ro' was cleanin' her machete, while Francis was just loungin' on a bunk bed and pluckin' off his toenails.

Louis was still outside, checkin' over the buckets. He was doin' a goofy little jog between them, so it was clearly just an excuse to work out a little. Nick was layin' down facin' away from Ellis, nappin' even though it was daytime.

And good lord was Ellis grateful for that.

It'd been awkward as hell to help a grown ass adult with washin' up, especially when he was just as naked. He'd just kept himself focused on gettin' it done, remindin' himself that it wouldn't be really fair to Nick if they all washed up while he sat injured and dirty. That didn't make it any less embarrassin'.

Now that he thought about it, just about _everythin'_ was embarrassin' about this situation. He was surrounded by a whole mess of folks that he didn't know, and all of 'em didn't have a lick of clothin' on. The more that he thought about it, the more that it just made him appreciate what life'd been like at Boon Hill for all of those years.

All the folks around him now hadn't had a safe place to be. Not like he had. This wasn't embarrassin' to them 'cause it was _normal_. They probably could only afford to bathe when it was rainin'. Even if they found a river or a lake, there was no way to tell if it had infected in it--and if they weren't in a base, they could get attacked at any second.

He remembered that back when they'd been lookin' for a more permanent source of water than jugs and bottles, one group'd found a pond not too far away. A couple of infected had drowned in it, one of which happened to be a Spitter. Every plant within a few feet of the water had rotted away, and when they tried to dunk an empty jug in it, the pond ate away the plastic in _seconds_. Whatever happened when the infected died in water was especially nasty.

"Looks like the rain stopped." Ro' sighed in relief. "C'mon, let's hang up our clothes. I want my sweatshirt dry as soon as possible."

Francis was out the door first, grumbling about hating wet jeans. It surprised Ellis just how little any of them seemed bugged by nudity. It was one thing to be used to it, but for none of them to even be shyin' away from lookin'? That was impressive to him.

He took the break in weather as an excuse to go up and send out a message. Apologizin' for bein' late to deliver it, of course--had to keep polite like that. It felt weird to be talkin' on the radio while he was naked. Ellis at least managed to avoid bringin' that up. Them folks listenin'--if there _were_ any folks listenin'--didn't need to know about it.

 

* * *

 

 

His shirt hadn't been that clean since the day he'd gotten it. The pleasant, soapy smell comin' off of his clothes just made him feel _awesome_. Sittin' by the fire, eatin' some of the canned goods they had--it was nice. Real nice. Ro' was pitchin' a fit about how much scavengin' they needed to do, but that just sounded like shit to worry about on another day to Ellis.

"You play anything on that?"

Nick's voice nearly startled him out of chewin' on his lukewarm green beans. "Oh, on the guitar there?" Ellis swallowed down a bite, laughin'. "Yeah, I play a little. I ain't heard a lot of songs, but it really helps to pass the time." He gulped down another bite--lord he hated the taste of green beans, but it was good for him. Allegedly. "Y'all wanna hear somethin'?"

Nick snorted, pickin' at his own food. "Yeah, sure. Beats silence."

He had a point there. No one was really talkin'. Bein' hungry did that to folks. Usually, Ellis'd be more than happy to let his food go cold--or even give it to someone else so he could talk more. Knowin' that food was scarce sure did change his priorities. He finished off his servin' of vegetables, then pulled the guitar up on his lap.

It took him a moment to remember a Guns n' Roses song, but once he got the chord down he started strummin' away. It was supposed to be a loud song, but it didn't take much to make it a slow one. Ellis had no problem croonin' away, tapping his foot to keep the tempo in check. Halfway through he completely forgot the lyrics, but it weren't like anyone was complainin'.

"So, what'd y'all do before the zombies came?" Ellis smiled pleasantly at Francis, looking over at Nick much the same. "I was just a kid, so I don't know what all I was doin' besides gettin' ready for school, but Ro' was headin' off to college, and Louis was real good with computers."

Francis scratched at his ear, shrugging. "Hell, I'd just joined a biker gang. Got my first motorcycle about a week before the zombies started getting reported." He smiled wistfully. "Brand new bike, too. Saved up every penny I stole-er, _earned_ from working. At the job I had." He faltered under Rochelle's withering glare. " _What?_ " He averted his gaze, fidgeting. "It was hard out there, okay?"

He realized that everyone was waiting on him to continue. "Anyway." He grinned. "I got arrested right when the zombies were hitting bad, and if I hadn't been in a holding cell, I probably would've died. Car crashed into the side of it, broke me out, I got some guns and got myself the hell out of there. Figured the zombies'd be around for a few weeks. You know. Military'd be on it, right? Well, they _weren't_." Francis huffed. "Couple of months of being alone, and I kind of got stuck. The zombies were all swarmed around this building, and I was up on a roof by myself. That's when I saw his sorry ass." He jerked a thumb towards Nick.

Nick just snorted. "Yeah, I ran into his lazy ass and managed to knock over some scaffolding. It was, uh, _really_ not a safe way to cross over from one building to the other, but, he got across."

Ellis watched Nick light up his cigarette, mesmerized. Both of these guys seemed real cool. Like action movie heroes that somehow ended up out in the zombie apocalypse with the rest of 'em. If he didn't know any better, he'd swear that Ro' was lookin' at that biker dude funny.

"I'd been, uh, drifting." Nick put his lighter away, smirking. "Just barely hit it big at a casino up in New York, figured I'd head South to Florida to keep the winning streak going." He paused to take a drag, turning his head to blow smoke away from the group. "Zombies hit right when I got into Pennsylvania, and I had to ditch my car on a highway. I guess assholes forget how to drive when zombies show up."

Some of the mysteriousness remained in Ellis's head. Both of them had cool soundin' lives before the zombies showed up. Biker gang, stealin', gamblin', driftin' around? It sounded like the shit that folks in movies did. But comparin' it to Louis and Ro' didn't work out in his head.

Ro' and Louis had solid, respectable lives ahead of them. Was that _all_ that the two of them did?

"Well, it beat staying in a halfway house." Nick was lookin' right at him when he said it.

_Shit, did I say that out loud?_ Ellis stumbled over his words, lookin' down at his boots. "Shit, I didn't mean nothin' bad by it. I just-"

"Hey, relax." Francis grinned, leaning over to clap Ellis on the shoulder. "Me and him? We were both doing what worked for us. Made ends meet, had fun. Hell, we probably survived the zombies so easy 'cause it wasn't that different from what living used to be like for us. Right?"

Nick seemed to hesitate, grimacing. "Yeah, sure, uh, pretty sure that the hookers I was paying for weren't occasionally clawing my chest open. And the Boomers were a new thing, too. Not a lot of those while you're _gambling_ , Frankie."

"Hey!" Francis huffed. "One of the guys in my gang was named Boomer--it's not as far-out as you're making it sound, Colonel Sanders."

"Ah, Christ, are you never gonna let that go?" Nick rolled his eyes. "C'mon, the suit's been ripped up for eight goddamn years, can we just drop it?"


	7. Scavenging

There couldn't have been a prouder moment for Ellis. He pulled his truck out of the garage, grinnin' from ear to ear at Rochelle's impressed look. Apparently it was rare as hell for a vehicle to still be workin'. The most obvious issue was the lack of maintenance--pretty much nothin' out there was still gettin' worked on like it oughta be worked on. Then there were Tanks. Hell, even regular zombies did quite a number on a car. That was just simple math: you get a few hundred people-sized monsters stompin' over a car, it ain't about to run the same as it used to.

Weather was a pretty mean adversary, too. Have a car sittin' out in the elements for ten years, it sure as _shit_ won't be runnin'. Even then, with everythin' already stacked against the odds of a car workin', there was the worst part of all: other people. Cars were plenty useful. Faster than zombie hordes, durable, capable of storin' supplies, and, of course, some of 'em were outfitted with air conditionin' and heatin'. Might as well have been a mobile fortress. Folks would do anything to get somethin' like that, even if it meant potentially destroyin' the car in the process.

But his truck was real precious. He'd even done a nice job of keepin' the paint fresh. Thanks to Keith's sacrifice, it was all in workin' order, too. He ran his thumb along the steering wheel, thoughts a mile away. Ro' had piled in next to him, with Francis setup in the back. Louis was gonna stay back with Nick. Little things like that bounced over his head as he maneuvered through the relatively narrow gate and headed off down the street.

If they'd just waited another day or two, Keith might not have died. They would've had more folks, and Keith wouldn't have needed to go out on his own to get the part. Christ, come to think of it, they wouldn't be needin' food so bad, neither. Ellis's head had been all messed up when Keith died. He hadn't been goin' on rounds like usual. If they'd been goin' on rounds, them mice would've never gotten into the food.

It just weren't _fair_. They'd been waitin' _so long_ for folks to finally show up, and when they did, it was all sorts of too late. Ellis couldn't get mad at these folks for that, though. He didn't even know who he was supposed to get mad at. His daddy, probably; if folks hadn't insisted on leavin' in the first place, none of that would've happened.

"Here's a good place to start." Ro' hopped out of the truck before it even came to a complete stop, machete out. Looked like it'd been a strip mall back in the day. Long since abandoned, too. Might've been hit early on, but it didn't look like nobody'd even tried to bust into it since. Considerin' how nicely the road'd been cleared up to that point, it was obvious that Boon Hill'd been workin' their way up to it.

_Well, Boon Hill got to it._ Weren't no sense in actin' like they failed. As long as Ellis was still kickin', that base was still kickin'. He smiled to himself. Hell, even if he went, these folks could carry on the torch. Louis'd probably be fine with keepin' that broadcast goin'. He'd already taken a liking to joinin' in on makin' the morning broadcast.

"Ellis, sweetie, you coming?" Ro' was standin' in the parking lot, trying not to sound irritated.

Francis hadn't even waited. He was already inside the first store. Ellis hopped out of the truck, cheeks burning as he realized just how distracted he was. Shit, it was gonna be a long day if he couldn't even keep his head on track for five minutes.

Since Francis seemed to have shit under control in the store he'd gone in--some kind of furniture store, but given how often folks had tried to make little caches to hide their finds, it wasn't exactly a bad idea to check it out--Ellis made his way down to the next shop with Ro': a grocery store. It probably wouldn't be full of shit, anyway. Grocery stores were always the first places checked out--and people were quick to realize that literally _anything_ with calories in it was better than not eatin' at all.

"Shit." Ellis stopped at the end of one of the aisles, grimacing. "Looks like the folks that tried to raid this place never made it."

Rochelle walked up next to him, shinin' her flashlight ahead. "They probably weren't the only ones to come here, but, you're right: they definitely didn't make it."

Two of the aisles had been toppled over, with the massive, mutated skeleton of a Tank draped over them. A few smaller skeletons were strewn about beneath it, one with the skull crushed in. Hard to tell if they'd been zombies or not. Judgin' by the gun next to one of them, at least one had been alive.

Ro' plucked the gun from the skeleton, then started feelin' around in their pockets. Ellis weren't comfortable with robbin' the dead, so instead he focused on lookin' for any cans of food that might've rolled out of sight. He lamented the punctured cans the most. Bags of long-since stale chips that were shredded open didn't hurt him as bad--he knew that none of those'd be even remotely edible by now.

Really, cans of food was usually pushin' it to begin with. Each one that was opened ran the risk of bein' either totally inedible, or makin' you sick. The real good shit was flour, rice, sugar, and salt. If they got that, they could eat pretty comfortably. Rice especially. Didn't take much of that to fill someone up.

His eyes fell on a glass jar that he'd never seen before. "Hey Ro'?" Ellis waited for her to come over, quizzically holding it out. "What's this _"honey"_ shit?"

" _Seriously_?" She took it from him, inspecting the glass carefully for any cracks. "You've _never_ heard of honey before?" Ro' had a _huge_ grin on her face. That shit was infectious. He hadn't seen her smile like that before. "Okay, okay. We get back to the base, _you're_ trying a spoonful." Ro' tucked it into her pocket, patting it to make sure that it was safe. "Did you find any other bottles?"

Ellis shook his head. "Nah, that was the only one." He sighed and went back to scrounging. While he was being pretty picky, he couldn't help but notice that Ro' was grabbing literally _everything_ that could potentially have a use. Tiles that'd come loose, plastic grocery bags, and empty cans all got shoved into her pack. "Geez, Ro', do y'all think we're really gonna need all that?"

She just shot him a look. "You never know. Tiles can be used to seal off mouse holes. Plastic bags are great for storing things, and if you get them setup right, you can use them to catch moisture. Cans can be cleaned out and used for storage. Also good for making traps. Fill one up with rocks, seal it, throw it. Sometimes the sound gets a horde running the other way." She smirked. "They're zombies. We're smarter than them. That's what Bill used to tell me, anyway."

Well shit, that made him realize just how wasteful they'd been. For years, they'd only picked up the most obvious supplies. "I'm real glad to have met you, Ro'." He grinned, still blown away by how much shit she knew. "Serious. I never would've even thought of that."

Ro' simply chuckled, tugging another tile free. "Well, I guess I should say the same to you, Ellis." She headed off into the next aisle. "We were getting a little desperate, if I'm going to be honest. It's one thing to survive, but..." She trailed off, sighing. "...It was really, _really_ nice to hear a guitar again. And to play a game. I think that beats the hell out of surviving."

Somehow, that made Ellis's day just a little bit brighter.

Unfortunately, it looked like honey was the only food they were gonna find. Ro' wasn't too keen on stayin' out for much longer, even if they hadn't found any food. She kept insistin' that honey would really make things better. Hell, Ellis believed her. Nobody hyped somethin' up that much unless it was real good. They headed back out to meet up with the biker dude--he looked suspiciously empty-handed.

Apparently, Francis hadn't found anythin'. So, naturally, Ro' made all of them go back in. She pulled the sheets off of the display beds, then convinced Francis to help her move the mattress onto the truck bed. As nice as bunk beds were, it'd probably be best to have a good mattress that they could stick injured people on. It was still pretty warm out, but winter was always important to prepare for.

They were just on the way out when Ro' made a little noise. "Fellas, we _need_ this."

"I don't get it, Ro', it just looks like a chair to me." Ellis scratched his head. It didn't look like anythin' special, neither. Did she want it to cut it up for supplies?

Ro' smacked his arm lightly, then started workin' on movin' it into the truck bed. Francis eventually helped her, huffin' and puffin' with the effort. Once it was loaded up, Ellis still found himself confused. "No, seriously. Ro', why do we need this chair?"

She just smirked at him, climbing into the truck. "That's a nice looking recliner. I always wanted to have one of those."

 

* * *

 

 

As they drove back, Ro' went down a checklist of street names. Ellis'd figured out pretty fast that the mission names for each supply run had been the names of streets. He couldn't confirm if they'd cleared each street, but as she named them off, Ellis found that a worryin' number of them had already been visited. Some'd been intentionally skipped over, and just drivin' down the street it was clear why.

They were gonna need to clear away a _ton_ of debris to get to the remainin' unexplored streets. Technically, there was still a whole mess of city to explore--Savannah was a mighty big place, after all. That didn't make it safe, though. He casually listed off the street names that his daddy had always called the _"border streets"_.

"I don't care _what_ they're called." Ro' chewed at her thumbnail, brow furrowing as she looked over the map. "Unless we start poking around there, we've only got four unexplored streets. All four of them will take several days to get into, and we have no way of knowing if there's any food there or not."

Ellis cringed. "I don't think that there's a good idea. I mean, my daddy had no problems with takin' risks to get supplies, but even _he_ said it was off limits. Even when supplies got real tight, he didn't want nobody pushin' into those streets."

Ro' hummed thoughtfully. "This is a pretty broad area that he set as off limits. I'm wondering just what the _hell_ he saw that'd scare him enough to not even risk it." She shook her head. "Well, we can try the harder spots first. I guess." Ro' looked at Ellis pointedly. "But we can't rely on what we find there. Not unless we find a ton of viable seeds and get a farm going."

"Shit, do you think we could get some farmin' done?" He sounded surprised. "Do seeds even still _work_ after fifteen years?" He'd never thought of it--hell, he wondered why his folks'd never thought of it.

"Well, it's worth a shot." She shrugged, rolling up the map. "If we had a farm, we could have fresh vegetables. Maybe fresh fruit, too? I don't know if we're far enough South for it. I never really cared about gardening too much." Ro' laughed. "But, if we can get that working, then we'll be set. Renewable food. Might make this base a bit more long term, too. Right now, it's operating by the skin of its teeth." She sobered up. "This can't last forever if we don't get a farm."

 


	8. Hopeless

Didn't take long for all of that goodness to go away again. Sure, Ellis was enjoyin' himself every day--games were fun with a whole group to cheer 'em on, and Nick's cards opened up room for even more games. Louis found a board game on one of their scavengin' runs. Never would've thought that pretendin' to have money could be fun, but once folks started buildin' hotels and gettin' sent to jail, it got real lively.

But behind it all was a real sense of trouble brewin'. They'd checked three of the streets already. Plenty of stuff that'd long since gone bad, and plenty more stuff that they had no use for. Even Ro' couldn't figure out what they'd need it for, although she'd still marked it down as potential spots to get firewood.

They needed seeds. Hell, they needed food, too, but seeds was somethin' that could be long-term. Ro' had helped him block out the last street so that they could search through every buildin'--it was much more densely packed with shops than the other streets were. Ellis thought it was a little weird how adamant she was about gettin' the biker dude to go with her. Somethin' about height--he had a feelin' it was more like a _crush_ than a survival-need.

That left him with Nick. Stoic, whiny, aggravatin' Nick. He stepped over the door that they'd just barely finished breaking down. "So, do y'all think we're gonna find any seed packets?"

"Nope." Nick gave the shop an ugly scowl, then stepped in.

"Man, why not?" Ellis frowned. "Ro' said that there's a lot of stores that carry seed packets. All we gotta do is find one of them."

"Because, Ellis." Nick didn't elaborate for quite some time. That was annoyin', too. Sometimes he'd just be quiet, like he didn't know what to say or hadn't even thought through his gripin' none. "Seeds only stay good if the climate's right for them. One storm that got the packets wet, one zombie bleeding on them, and bam. Useless."

Ellis just rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, it ain't like that could've happened to _all_ of the seeds, man. All we need is one." Seed packets usually had more than a single seed in them, too; if they could just get one plant growin', that'd be a good start. Not the best start, but it'd beat havin' nothin'.

Nick grunted. "You ever farm before, sport?" He threw a dusty, but otherwise clean, towel at Ellis with a smirk. "Or is that accent of yours just for show?"

"No." Ellis missed the catch, defensive when faced with Nick's little jab at his accent. "Hell, I bet you ain't farmed, neither." _So take that, Mr. gamblin' man._

"That's my _point_." Nick went back to scavenging, sighin' real loudly. "I know Francis doesn't know a goddamn thing about farming. Didn't sound like Rochelle or Louis knew, either. Plants all need different things. It's not as easy as sticking a seed in dirt. We'd probably need fertilizer, and pesticides, and tons of water, and the right temperature and sun. I know that some fruiting plants take a few years to make anything."

_Aw, hell, he's whinin' again._

Nick kicked over some empty bucket, grimacing. "Ever hear of Monsanto? They used to make seeds in a factory. I only heard about this shit 'cause people were talking about it, but, they engineered plants so that you have to keep buying seeds. Whatever seeds we find, we can't afford not to plant 'em all, 'cause who knows how many are actually still any good, but then--that's it. No more seeds. We get a season's worth of fresh veggies, and then we're out."

Well, shit. Ellis stopped looking through the various art supplies on a shelf. He hadn't thought about it like that. "Shit. Think we could find a book or somethin'?" There had to be instructions on farmin' somewhere, right? And really, how hard could it be?

But that wasn't the real issue, and Nick was apparently feelin' charitable enough not to make fun of him. He kept searchin', even if his spirit was dashed. Shit. If the seeds only lasted for a year, then there'd be no way that it'd be sustainable. They'd have to find good seeds, or plants that came back every year. Somethin' sustainable. Somethin' where they didn't run out of hope.

Hope was somethin' that Ellis was startin' to think that he might need to let go of if things didn't get to changin' real soon. This store just looked like it'd been some sort of craft store. Not real useful unless one of them was good at art--and none of them really had the time to do anythin' big, anyway.

"Hey. Kid."

Ellis looked up from the sketchbooks he'd been staring at, jumpin' when he realized that Nick was right next to him. He looked Nick in the eye briefly before lookin' away. Lord have mercy, did he always have that intense look on his face? "What is it, man?"

Nick sighed. "Relax. Rochelle's probably right. Every place that stocks seeds stocks a couple thousand of 'em. We'll be fine." He smirked. "Besides, we can always pickle and can what we don't eat right away. That's bound to give us a couple more years." He scanned around the shop with his flashlight, chucklin'. His laugh always sounded pretty dusty, like he'd smoked a whole bunch in his life. "But, uh, I doubt we're finding any seeds here. This is an art store. Won't have any seeds here."

He watched the Northerner leave, a bit surprised. _Was he bein' nice to me just there?_ Well, as nice as Nick could be. Usually that guy was just whinin' all the time and didn't try to dial it back. Ellis followed after Nick quietly after that, keepin' an eye out for zombies. Weren't as many around today as normal. Small blessin', really. Hordes moved around the city only when noise attracted them. Somethin' big probably got them movin' to another side of town.

_Aw hell, I can't just ignore it. I'm curious._ Ellis quickened his pace until he was walking in line with Nick, looking up at him. "Hey, what gives? Y'all were all down on this before, but now you're sayin' that it's gonna work?" He grinned. "What's your angle, man?"

"What, that obvious, huh?" Nick chuckled, shaking his head. "Kid, you're an open book. You looked like you were about to cry. I need you, right now, to be focused on searching for shit. We don't have time for you to be having a breakdown out in the middle of goddamn nowhere."

 

* * *

 

 

Nick's words stuck with Ellis the whole way back. Nobody'd found any seeds. Rochelle'd found a bag of sugar, but a Witch was literally sittin' right on top of it. They couldn't tell if that zombie'd ripped the bag open or not--but it sure weren't worth testin' their luck to find out.

So another day, and another nearly useless search. Francis found some ammo and a handgun. That weren't worth the fuel it'd taken to get to the street. It was so disheartenin' to have so little to show for a whole day of scourin' a street for supplies. Ellis parked the truck in the garage, then hopped out and headed over to Louis. Shit, he expected that the bad news might upset Louis, but his upbeat friend just kept on smilin' like nothin' was wrong.

"Hey, don't go beating yourself up over it." Louis smiled, pattin' Ellis's shoulder. "I heard something on the radio today!"

Ellis's eyes lit up like it was Christmas. "Ho-ly shit, are you serious? What all did y'all hear?" Had someone been able to radio back? Did they have good news?

Louis called over everyone else, eyes bright. "Apparently, there's a base over in Macon that's been trying to boost their signal to get in touch with us. They've got supplies, too. Their base is setup on a farm! I bet we could trade with them to get some food here."

"Trade?" Nick snorted. "Why don't we just move there? Beats the hell out of trying to hold a place with a handful of people."

Ro' shook her head. "We should check out the remaining sections of Savannah first. I'd rather find something here than drive out to a different base and risk life and limb on a hunch." She looked at Ellis. "Just because Ellis was friendly, doesn't mean another base'd be friendly. Ellis said that they were sending out that signal every single day for fifteen years. How in the hell did it take a base within radio range _that_ long to boost the signal?"

"That's a good point." Francis rubbed at his neck. "It'd suck if we drove all the way out there and found out they had less shit than us. Or worse, find out that they're cannibals. I hate cannibals."

Nick snickered. "You hate cannibals, huh? Quite the controversial opinion there, Frankie."

"Bite my ass, Colonel Sanders." Francis cuffed Nick's shoulder, barin' his teeth.

Ellis felt a little bit overwhelmed. Everybody was talkin' over their own ideas and plans on what to do, and Ellis was quick realizin' that none of them saw the base as home. Not like he did. "Hey, uh, folks?"

But none of them listened. Francis and Nick were gettin' into a petty argument. Louis was tryin' to break it up, while Ro' was eggin' it on. Ellis tried clearin' his throat, but still he got ignored. He could feel his lip tremblin' from how frustrated he was. Ellis wasn't gonna take it lyin' down.

He stomped his boot down. " **Please!** Can y'all just _listen_ to me?" That got 'em to stop. Ellis gathered up his nerves and cooled his temper right away. "I know this place ain't home to any of y'all, but it's home to me. I don't wanna go abandonin' this place unless we _absolutely_ gotta."

Ellis pointed over to the shallow graves, snifflin' before he could stop himself. "I had to bury my ma and my best friend, okay? They both gave up everythin' to keep this place goin'. I ain't leavin' just 'cause there might be greener grass at the other pasture. Y'all don't know that. Them folks could be anyone. Cannibals, sure that's bad, but there's a whole hell of a lot of shitty ways folks can be. I ain't givin' up on Boon Hill, even if it's lookin' hopeless."


	9. Crying

Folks'd been avoidin' talking to Ellis since his little speech earlier. Hell, Ro' wouldn't even make eye contact. They probably hadn't thought through how much heavier a loss was to him. To all of them, it was just business as usual. That made him feel sick. Just how bad was life out there that none of them could even bat an eye at him losin' the two most important folks in his life?

He'd headed off to bed early, not even able to finish his rations. Francis'd been more than happy to finish off what he left. Ellis just couldn't stomach hangin' out with all of 'em when they were pretendin' that he didn't so much as exist. All of 'em were too busy actin' cheery and happy to give a damn that Ellis was fallin' apart.

He felt sorry for all of 'em. They were all carryin' on around the fire. He'd even heard Louis suggestin' that they just give him some time to himself. That weren't what Ellis needed. He'd never had a ton of time to himself before. All he could think of was his ma showin' him her old recipe book and goin' on about how she was gonna try her hardest to figure out how to make cookies on a campfire, or Keith tryin' to make a skateboard out of two roller skates and a car door.

Thinkin' about them made it hurt _worse_. Ma hadn't died in a nice, warm bed with her loved ones all around. She'd passed all alone and coughin' up a lung, knowin' that her husband left her ages ago. Keith didn't die an old man with a pack of kids runnin' underfoot. He died chokin' and gaspin' for breath through the holes in his face and throat.

And that shit was _normal_ to all of them.

He cringed when he heard them laughin'. That one was loud enough to carry all the way over to his bed on the other end of the base. Ellis bit his lip. Every single one of them was perfectly ready to lose somebody. They'd go right back to laughin' it up. If Louis died tomorrow, Ro' might be hurt, but she'd get over it. Francis and Nick wouldn't even care. How could folks just move on like that?

"Hey."

Ellis jumped, lookin' up at Nick. He'd somehow gotten in without Ellis hearin' him. It was about then that Ellis realized that he'd been cryin', so he started wipin' the tears away as quick as he could, snifflin' loudly. "Here to laugh at me for what all I said?"

Nick snorted, lightin' up one of his cigarettes. "Why, think it'll help?" The Northerner smirked when Ellis shook his head. "Then no, I'm not here to laugh at you."

"Then why'd y'all come over here, huh?" Ellis stopped tryin' to force the tears to stop, half-glarin' up at Nick. If Louis hadn't been a shoulder to cry on, then he _definitely_ doubted that Nick was one. Nothin' about Nick's attitude had so much as _suggested_ a lick of kindness.

He didn't even give an answer, neither, just standin' over by the door and smokin'. Asshole. Nick was watchin' the rest of the group, too. Now Ellis was gettin' a feeling that he knew why Nick had come over. He'd probably forgotten his lighter or his cigarettes back on his bunk and needed to grab it to smoke. He'd only even pointed Ellis out just to acknowledge his existence.

Ellis went back to reflectin' on Keith and his ma. At least he couldn't cry no more. Nick'd gone and dried up all of his tears. Somethin' about how mean the man acted made him too angry to be sad. In a way, that was sort of like helpin'. Kind of.

He looked up when Nick stamped out his cigarette. Surprisingly, the Northerner didn't go back to the group. Instead, he bent over and picked up Ellis's guitar, then sat down on the bunk across from Ellis.

"Uh. What're y'all doin'?" Now Ellis was just confused. Did Nick even _know_ how to play the guitar?

Nick smirked, strummin' at the strings while tunin' it a little. "Playing a song for you." He looked up, catchin' Ellis's eye. "You look like you need one."

Ellis couldn't argue that he didn't need one--'cause he did. He needed to hear someone comfortin' him. It just didn't seem normal that it'd be Nick. "Yeah, but-- _why're_ y'all doin' that?"

"Because, kiddo." Nick sighed. "We've all been in your shoes in some way." He started playin' somethin' that Ellis'd never heard before--which wasn't sayin' much, considerin' just how little music Ellis'd heard since the zombies came. "But none of us are used to the life you've been living."

"How so?" Ellis scratched at his nose, calmin' down a bit. "I mean, it's just life. Loss is loss, right? Did y'all become too hardened to even care when you lose somebody?"

Nick chuckled, switchin' to a different key. Minor key, from the sound of it. "Of _course_ we care. Christ, Rochelle's still carrying around that goddamn machete and won't even let someone else touch it." He stopped playing, lookin' out at the group. "I bet that every single person there has lost somebody close to them. If not directly in front of them, then by the nature of how this shit went down. Do you think any of us know where our friends and family are? Or if they're even still alive?" Nick started playin' again, sighin'. "At least you know."

And then he started singin'.

That man had a hell of a voice. But Ellis weren't really focused on it. He was too busy thinkin' about what all Nick had said. _Shit_. Ellis'd been thinkin' about what he could see, and not what was implied.

None of them were travelin' with their own folks. Louis weren't related to Ro' in any way, same as Francis and Nick. They were all just folks that ran into each other and hoped for the best. When this shit started, both Louis and Ro' were teens. Too young to be out on their own. They definitely would've had parents that were still a big part of their lives. And all of 'em probably had a whole mess of friends.

But now they all had nothin'. Just some random stranger they met after this shit started. Everyone they met after that was a stranger, too. Francis and Nick both lost a girl called Zoey, Louis and Ro' both lost a man named Bill. Bill'd been so important to them that Ro'd kept his machete. Zoey meant so much to Francis that he was wearin' her necklace, even if it was a little bit girly on a big guy like him.

Nick stopped singin', pattin' the side of the guitar. "I know it's tough, fireball. We all know that. I'm pretty sure we all do, anyway." He chuckled. It sounded softer than usual. "But, uh...we can't all afford to cry. No one's really ready to tell you not to cry, and it's safe enough here that you can."

Ellis shifted over to the bunk Nick was on, leanin' against him. It made him happy that Nick didn't shove him away. "I know, I just..." He swallowed, then cleared his throat. Didn't do nobody any good if his voice was a mess. "Christ, man, can I just lean on y'all like this for a while?"

He felt Nick shift around a little, and then the Northerner went back to singin' again.

It was nice. It weren't comfort, really, but it was somethin' close to that. Somethin' warm, and somethin' that didn't make any demands of him. He just had to lean on Nick while Nick played and sang.

Questions were eatin' away at him, though.

"Did...did y'all lose anybody close to you?"

Nick breathed in sharply, stoppin' himself mid-song. Ellis almost wanted to take the question back, but Nick started up playin' again. "Yeah." He looked over, and their eyes met again. "Lost my wife, just about four months after the first wave of infected hit. She, uh, she got in a fight with me and ran off to be by herself." Nick looked away. "I followed after her, but just...just the ten minute headstart was all that a Hunter needed to kill her. Couldn't even use a defib, not with her heart shredded like that."

 

* * *

 

 

Ellis woke up the next mornin' to find that they'd both sort of taken over Louis's bunk for the night. Sleepin' against each other. Everybody was teasin' 'em somethin' fierce. Lord was that embarrasin'. Nick just took it in stride, laughin' off everyone's comments like it was nothin'.

It weren't nothin' to Ellis. He was walkin' around the base with a smile. Nick'd stayed with him all night to talk to him and cheer him up in his own way. It didn't feel fake, neither. If Nick'd come in and cooed at him and comforted him all normal-like, it would've been forced as hell. That'd been the real deal, Ellis was sure of it.

He'd just finished his broadcast, cheerily talkin' to the folks at the other base. Plan was to investigate the rest of Savannah, and then make a trip to them. Might as well let them know about it so they didn't think that Boon Hill was done for. That was when Louis dropped a bombshell on him.

"So, are you gay or something?"

" _What_?" Ellis sounded offended--which, he was. "Hell no, man, I ain't gay!"

Louis recoiled, eyes widening a little. "Woah, woah. Calm down. I didn't mean anything bad by it!"

Ellis huffed. " _Sure_ y'all didn't. That ain't right, man, callin' me stupid like that."

Louis seemed to have several conflictin' emotions goin' on. Like somethin' that Ellis'd just said wasn't addin' up right. "That's...not even close to what I meant." He spoke slowly, wavin' his hands around a little. "I meant: you were cuddled up on Nick last night. Do you have a crush on him?"

Now that was weird. How Louis connected that to bein' gay, Ellis didn't know. "I mean, I guess? He was real nice to me yesterday, and he's got a real good singin' voice, and his eyes, oh _man_ , his eyes." Ellis smiled, gettin' a little bit dreamy just thinkin' about it. It'd been a pretty nice night, all things considered.

"Yep, that's a crush alright." Louis chuckled. "That's what gay actually is--it isn't calling someone an idiot. It just means that you're attracted to guys, when you're a guy."

Ellis blinked. "Shit, really?" He took off his hat to scratch at his head, then put it back. "I didn't know that. Don't think anybody on base knew that, neither. Learn somethin' new every day, I guess."


	10. Goodbye

So, of course, it _weren't_ somethin' new. Ro' was quick to tell him all about how the South had a rather nasty reputation about gay folks. Now that Ellis thought on it, it'd been his daddy and them jackasses that'd been sayin' gay like it was a bad thing. No one'd ever corrected 'em, so Ellis'd assumed that it was nothin' wrong to treat it like an insult.

That were a mistake. He just prayed that his ma didn't agree with his daddy on that. Didn't seem like her, at least. She'd _never_ be nasty about someone lovin' someone else.

Uncomfortable thoughts aside, Ellis found himself alone with Ro'. Which was weird. And tense. He'd figured that they'd be bringin' everybody, since the unexplored section of Savannah was pretty large. Hell, seein' the whole map made it intimidatin' as all get out. Technically, they were in just a real small section of Savannah--the rest of the town was so much bigger. Made him excited, in a way; if it were that big, then there was bound to be tons of supplies.

But Ro' only wanted him comin' with her. Everyone else was to stay behind, and keep some shit loaded up in the truck. Ellis balked at it, 'cause damn, it was like she'd already gone and given up on there bein' any supplies. Even when he'd showed her just how big the unexplored part was, she still ignored him. It was frustratin', but not out of the ordinary.

Now that he thought about it, it _was_ a little weird. His daddy weren't afraid of a single damn thing. Picked fights, grabbed loaded guns by the muzzle--hell, he'd even punched a Jockey in the face once. So what in the hell'd scared him enough to tell nobody to go this way?

Supplies hadn't been that tight, but seein' the surroundin' streets, it was clear that they'd picked the area clean. _Shit. Shit, shit, shit._ Ellis stopped for a second. **_Shit_**.

"Keep up, Ellis." Ro' kept her voice low. She was half-crouched, like she was expectin' somethin' nasty. Shit, they'd left pretty early in the day and hadn't even brought the truck. Everything about her behavior was just screamin' trouble.

And Ellis was inclined to agree with that sentiment.

If the streets they explored were picked clean, then that meant that his daddy'd _known_ that they were gonna run out of supplies. And he got most of the folks to go with 'im. Some of 'em stayed behind--maybe they didn't believe his daddy, maybe they didn't wanna abandon his ma. But they stayed, and he remembered the runs they were doin'--and the runs they'd planned to do. They probably figured out along the line that there weren't nothin', and that the supplies they had weren't gonna be enough to last another year, so they tried to get ma to leave. And when she wouldn't, they were beggin' him and Keith to leave.

And ma went to her death without ever tellin' Ellis. Maybe she knew, maybe she didn't. That part didn't matter none, 'cause Ellis knew she'd never tell him either way. This place'd been home for so many years, and Ellis'd barely spent any of them sufferin'. Chances were that she'd known some sufferin' along the line. Some hunger pangs, back when food'd been tough. Maybe she'd believed that there weren't nobody out there, and she was hangin' on to the hope that someone'd answer back.

It was all just too bleak to think about. Ellis stuck close to Ro', clingin' to his crowbar. Ro' had an assault rifle, the machete strapped to her leg. He didn't know what to expect.

Still, it was a long walk--and since Ro' weren't talkin', that left him to think. So what if he did have a crush on that Nick fella? Nick had a wife. A very dead wife, but still a wife. Nick was also pretty whiny and mean. And older, too, although he didn't look it. The real problem was that attitude of his--but he didn't seem all bad. He weren't like one of daddy's friends, all messed up in the head with how mean they were. He just seemed bitter.

He'd been nice, too. Last night'd been real nice, in fact. Nobody else'd wanted to help him out like that. And Nick got nothin' out of it, so it had to be genuine in some kind of way, right? Unless he just did it so he'd have someone watchin' out for him. Ellis wasn't about to be that naive and think he was special.

But hell, it'd just been nice to feel somethin' like that. Butterflies in his stomach. Reminded him of some of the books he'd read, or the shows he'd watched. Those always had a guy and a girl, and it made him a little sore that he was thinkin' of a lot of the girly parts in those things--but he knew he'd been starin' at Nick like some of those guys were starin' at the ladies, too. It was weird as hell, and he wished he'd had somethin' to tell him what to do.

It weren't really somethin' that he could talk about, anyway, so he settled for just thinkin' about it. Sure, Louis was fine to bring it up to--but he couldn't tell Francis. Ro' probably wouldn't even care. Nick... _naw_ , that was right out. Nick would probably make fun of him for it. He didn't want that. Lord know that he didn't need his hopes crushed that hard.

He wondered if Ro'd done anythin' about her crush on the biker dude. He'd seen her makin' eyes at him, and sometimes the way she was talkin' sounded like she was bein' flirty. If Ellis listened real close, it sounded like Francis was tryin' to do the same, too. They'd just met--but it seemed like them wanderin' folks moved fast, just in case they lost somebody.

Ro' snapped him away from his thoughts when she grabbed his wrist and tugged him into a buildin'. Her hand was on his mouth before he could even say somethin', so he shut up right quick. Whatever it was, it couldn't have been a zombie. Ro' wouldn't be makin' him shut up for one of them--once they caught sight of a person, they didn't care about noise. Besides, no zombie'd be enough to scare off Ro'.

Instead, two guys went walkin' down the street. Both of 'em had assault rifles. One of 'em had a necklace--a kind of bloody lookin' necklace that made Ellis uneasy as hell. They weren't talkin'; just scannin' the street with their guns out.

"Shit, I coulda sworn I saw some folks."

The other one lit up a cigar, snortin'. "Yeah, well, probably just some zombies. Y'all know how many of them're around."

The first one sighed. "True, true." He pulled out some cigarettes for himself. "...Y'all don't think Tony's gonna _kill_ Sarah, do you? 'Cause it ain't like it's her fault or nothin'."

"Ain't her fault?" The second one laughed. "Bitch shoulda kept her damn legs shut. Y'all know the rules: no kids, no oldies, just the strongest survivin'." He smacked the first one upside the head. "Shit, don't go sayin' that dumb shit back at the camp. Gonna get us both lined up and shot."

 

* * *

 

 

They sat in dead silence in that buildin' for _hours_. Ellis'd felt Ro's heart hammerin' the whole time. He couldn't even wrap his head around the thought of there bein' other folks in Savannah. Just what they'd been sayin' was all he needed to hear to know why his daddy didn't want none of them headin' over there. Their group had a whole mess of kids and old folks. Just people tryin' to live.

Ro' decided when it was safe enough to get movin', so they did just that. Both of 'em just about ran the whole way. Even avoided shootin' zombies on the way back, just for good measure. Better to leave as little evidence that they'd been there as possible.

Ellis couldn't stop thinkin' about Ro's face. Horrified. She looked completely horrified, like this was the worst possible thing imaginable. Sure, they sounded bad--real bad, in fact, but what did it matter? If his daddy knew about them, then they had to have met once. So that meant that group'd left them alone for all those years, too. Not that Ellis could see them ever tradin' with a group like that or even bein' nice to them--but askin' for permission to explore other parts of the city could help with rations.

Right?

As soon as the gate was open, Ro' stormed right up to Louis, hardly even waitin' for the whole group to circle around. "We have to go. **Now**."

"Wait, w-what?" Ellis blinked owlishly.

But Ro' was already barkin' out orders on what to do, rallyin' everyone to get packin' shit into the truck. They could fit three up front and two in the back--and she had no problem with it bein' her and Francis in the back, guns out and ready. Ellis was just stammerin', tryin' to get up the words to even ask her what the hell she knew.

She whirled around suddenly, makin' him yelp, and grabbed his shoulders. "I know that rule. I _know_ it." Ro' swallowed, gatherin' herself up. She was squeezin' down on his shoulders a little hard. "There's this group that has a bunch of...splinters. They settle near other groups and wait for them to collapse, then come in and take whatever they can--and take whatever people they can, too."

Ro' shouted over to Louis to grab some pillows from the safe house, then looked back to Ellis. Looked him right in the eye. "They kill anyone that's under twenty. They kill any woman that gets pregnant. They kill anyone over the age of forty. They'll only let some people have kids. It's a nightmare, and it only continues on because they're vultures, and they're all well-armed."

When she finally let go of Ellis's shoulders, he rubbed at 'em. They almost felt bruised. "I'd bet a whole weeks worth of rations that they've been watching your base for a while. They're probably planning on coming here, any day now, so they can pick this base clean and pick up any survivors left here." Ro' looked at him flatly. "I've been trying to survive for years now, and I _still_ would rather die than go with them. So. We're leaving."

Ellis could only watch as she walked off to help pack shit up, once again completely lost. It weren't up for discussion. It weren't up for _nothin'_. They had to go. Not tomorrow, not even when the sun set. As soon as they finished packin' up the truck with as much as they could fit, they were leavin'.

He started over to say somethin' to his ma's grave--a sorry, maybe, or a goodbye, but Nick called him over to help get water bottled in smaller containers, and Ellis realized that there weren't no time. Maybe, if he could convince 'em, he could say a quick thing over the graves and be at peace about it.

But an hour later, with everyone pilin' into the truck and Louis behind the wheel, Ellis realized that he really weren't bein' given a choice on it. He was snifflin' somethin' fierce, tears just barely held back. It was a walk that he didn't wanna take--but he knew it'd be so much worse if he didn't go with 'em.

It was Nick that convinced 'em all to wait a moment.

And it was Nick that stood next to him while he said his last goodbye's to Keith and his ma.


	11. Wasteland

Trees.

Ellis couldn't remember ever _seein'_ this many trees before. It felt like it was just them, the road, and trees. Of course, there was plenty of wrecked cars along the way. Abandoned, some of 'em. A few he couldn't tell if they'd been abandoned or wrecked. Rusted from bein' out in the rain for so long. Some looked newer than others, but Ellis reckoned that had to be just the make, model, and year of the vehicle.

A lot of dead people, too. Skeletons in clothes. It was a hell of a sight. Folks that probably died barely even a year into the infection, if that. Picked clean by vultures or maggots. Maybe even them zombies. Ellis'd never heard of the zombies eatin' folks, but it was possible. Had to be--zombies had to be eatin' _somethin'_ , right?

Just about everybody was quiet in the truck. Even Louis. He'd spent the first hour or so tryin' to make small talk, but any time that anybody got loud enough for Ro' to hear in the truckbed, she'd smack the window and tell them to shut up. Seemed she was the most paranoid about them folks back in Savannah.

So that just made the ride quiet. And awkward. Truck weren't really meant to seat three, so Nick was half-squished against him. It weren't any kind of comfortable, and sometimes Nick would utter a complaint under his breath.

Funny to see the world outside of Savannah now. Every book he'd read that talked about an apocalypse always mentioned that it was a total wasteland outside of the walls of whatever settin' the book had. That obviously weren't the case. Everything looked kind of nice in a way. Lots of greens, birds chirpin', clear blue skies. It was like nature had gone and moved on, leavin' behind the people to suffer.

Made Ellis a little bit upset to think about it.

For fifteen whole years, he'd been in one little chunk of town. He'd only ever seen a few streets that weren't in that safe little chunk. This was just three hours away from where he'd been. He'd been seein' nothing but buildings and asphalt and concrete for _years_.

"So uh, where are we goin'?" Ellis looked over at Louis. They'd been quiet for almost an hour now, and it was startin' to wear on Ellis's nerves. He was curious about where they were goin'--he didn't remember anyone sayin' anything about a destination.

Louis didn't take his eyes off of the road, shrugging his shoulders a tiny bit. "We're going to check out that base that radioed us. If the truck has enough fuel to make it there, anyway." He glanced in the rearview mirror at Ro'. "I think it's gonna be another five hours before we get there, so we might want to stop for gas along the way."

Ellis frowned. "Why? Truck's got enough fuel to go for days, man, it ain't needin' more." _A stop out in the wilds? Wouldn't that be dangerous?_

"Well, we don't know what kind of people are at this base, either." Louis sighed. Looked like he was deflatin' a little. "They _could_ be nice, or they could be more guys from that group. Or anything, really. So it's a good idea to have a full tank of gas, just in case we have to get really, _really_ far away from everything."

"Yeah? What's the plan if this base's got nothing?" Nick sounded pissed off. 'Course, he always sounded a little bit pissed off. Whiny guy. "I'm not looking forward to a ten hour goddamn drive like this." He looked at Ellis briefly, lockin' eyes. "No offense, kiddo, but I don't feel like half-sitting in your lap all day."

_Shit_. Ellis probably shouldn't have laughed, but it was a little funny that Nick was havin' to sit in the least comfortable way possible. Nick just let out a little whine in response and went back to fidgetin' to get comfortable. "I think Nick's got a point, man. We need a backup plan besides just drivin' somewhere, 'cause we could end up drivin' forever and get stuck somewhere that ain't got supplies."

Louis hummed, brow furrowed. He seemed to be tryin' to think up a good backup plan on the fly--alarmin', to say the least, but it weren't like he'd had a ton of opportunities to come up with any ideas before they got to drivin'. "Well, we heard a rumor when we were traveling around up North that there's a big base up in Canada. Never could take the risk to go up there before because the winter's on the border between the US and Canada are way too harsh. We'd probably die walking."

_Canada?_ "Ain't that a whole 'nother country? Sounds real far, man." He scratched his chin, frowning. "...How cold are we talkin'? 'Cause when it gets down to like, thirty, that's real bad."

Nick snickered next to him. "Thirty? Yeah, uh, _sport_? Try: _negative_ thirty. Try: so cold that your ears fall off after thirty minutes." He shook his head. "And that's just the cold. Get a couple feet of snow on the ground that doesn't melt until spring, throw some ice storms into the mix...sounds like a _great_ plan to me."

"If a base is up there, then it has to have heat and shelter. And I bet that the cold ruins these zombies, too!" Louis sounded hopeful as hell. "I mean, that's just the basics of cold weather. I know there weren't nearly as many zombies when we were farther North."

As Louis spoke, he turned off of the road they'd been followin' and headed into a town. Weren't nothin' like Savannah. Well, it reminded Ellis of certain parts of town, but definitely not the parts he'd been in. Everythin' was smaller, too. Weren't as much shit around, neither. Now this looked more like the wasteland that Ellis'd been expectin'.

It was just depressin' as hell, too. A whole mess of small stores, windows all smashed in, bodies everywhere. Some looked like they'd only been dead a few months, others were skeletons. Most of 'em were skeletons, in fact. The few zombies around looked pretty thin, too. Made Ellis's skin crawl to think about how well-fed the zombies back in Savannah had looked.

The zombies were just lookin' at 'em, too. Not really tryin' to give chase. Hell, they probably didn't even have the strength to go runnin' after a truck. One zombie was gettin' beat up by a couple of other zombies. Seemed a little horrifyin', like they were tryin' to kill one of their own just to have a bite to eat.

Louis didn't stop until they got to a gas station. Ellis watched as Ro', Francis, and Louis hopped out and went lookin' at the fuel pumps. Apparently it weren't exactly easy to get them workin' without power. Ellis got out and stretched, listenin' to Nick whinin' and groanin' as he crawled out, too.

"Well, I wonder how long it'll take them to get some fuel." Nick sounded a little tired--but that weren't nothin' new. Almost seemed like it was part of that goofy accent of his. "I'm calling dibs on sitting down first this time."

Ellis just sighed. It'd be only fair to let 'im sit down proper.

 

* * *

 

 

Holy shit, Ellis could see why Nick'd been whinin'.

In order to keep himself from knockin' into anything important, he had to plant one boot between Nick's legs, and squeeze the other over so that his toe was scrapin' against the side of Nick's shoe. He was half-sittin' on Nick's lap, and half-sittin' on nothing at all.

Still, he wanted to prove that he was tougher than Nick, so he opted to keep his mouth shut. That was provin' to be pretty hard, 'cause nobody was talkin'. The silence was awful. Made him wonder if these Northerners ever bothered to talk unless they had to. Sure seemed that way.

Ellis didn't even make it another twenty minutes before he decided to fill the silence with somethin'. "Hey, this sort of reminds me of this one time with my buddy Keith." He pointed at the blackbirds that were flyin' overhead to emphasize what exactly had jogged his memory.

"See, Keith was always havin' trouble with birds. Ma said it was 'cause whenever he took his hat off, his hair was so messy that it looked like a bird's nest." Ellis laughed a little; it hadn't been that bad, but he figured that his ma had just been tryin' to scare Keith into brushin' his hair for a change. "Well, he's bein' chased by a Tank, when all of a sudden this crow lands on his head and starts peckin'."

He grinned broadly. "Now, Keith knew he couldn't stop, and even with all that head-shakin' that he was doin', the crow just wouldn't leave him alone. So he makes it back to base, right, but the Tank's still chasin' him, and right when they open the gate up to send out folks to help, like, a dozen or so of them crows fly out of the gate and go straight for Keith's hair. Took us a good couple of _hours_ to cut all them crows loose."

Ellis waited for any sort of reaction to his story, but noted that everyone just seemed a little bit irritated by it. He did catch a little smirk from Nick, though. That could mean anything. Nick smirked when he was about to say somethin' real mean, after all.

But, he didn't. His smirk went away, and nothin' nasty was left behind. So Ellis got a little bit bolder and just picked out a story about Keith at random. "Oh, or this one time, Keith thought that flour was the only ingredient y'all needed to make pancakes, 'cause he'd only ever seen ma makin' pancakes and seen white stuff, so he figured that the white stuff was flour."

He had to stop to catch his breath, almost giving himself hiccups in the process. "Well, he made up a batch of fried water-and-flour things. They didn't taste like nothin' at all, and they just looked really flat and wierd. Folks were so pissed off at Keith that he was forced to eat all of the flour-cakes, 'cause otherwise it'd be a huge mess."

For the next few hours, he slipped into Keith story after Keith story. It felt like his buddy was right there with him, and that made things all the more easy to deal with. No one told him to stop, although Ro' would sometimes hiss out for him to get quiet if he was gettin' too into a story.

After a while, he started noticin' that Nick was holdin' his hand. He saw that Louis was noticin', too, but it weren't clear if Francis and Ro' were seein' it. That made the ride even nicer. So long as he got to cling to the stories about his friend, he felt like he could make it another day.

And, of course, havin' his crush sittin' right next to him made it pretty nice, too.


	12. Cure

_Shit, I miss dreamin'._ Ellis'd been keepin' his eyes shut for what felt like ages. Somewhere along the line he'd dozed off, but it'd been a quick nap that left him feelin' groggy as hell. Ellis just kept hopin' that he'd drift off and get a dream. Somethin' real pleasant. Maybe even somethin' from when he was a little kid, before all them zombies ruined everythin'.

But that just weren't happenin'. The truck was bouncin' around too much, and he was way too uncomfortable to sleep properly. At least Nick weren't shovin' him off--he'd been dozin' up against the Northerner, head tucked under his chin. Nobody was talkin', _again_. Made things pretty borin', in Ellis's mind, but none of them seemed to mind it.

Until they started speakin', of course. Ellis kept his eyes closed. It weren't nothin' interesting, anyway--just a bunch of plans about what to do if this base was a wash. He didn't get how they didn't trust it. Did they all really have so little faith in humanity? Well, Louis was at least arguin' that the base might be fine. Sounded hopeful, too. Least one of them was sane.

_Maybe they've all got a point, though._ That made Ellis sad as hell. They'd come to his base 'cause of the broadcast, but it'd gone from bein' a real lively, boomin' place to just him and barely any supplies. Secure as shit, but settled right next to some powerfully evil folks. And their prior experiences with bases hadn't been all that great, neither. It was pretty sensible for them to all be lookin' at this base like it'd be bad, too.

Ro' was startin' to suggest that they just skip the base altogether and start towards the base in Canada. Louis and Nick were both protestin' that, for different reasons. Louis didn't think it was right to not even give them a chance. Nick thought it'd be a pain in the ass to drive that far just to get disappointed again. Seemed like he didn't buy that there was some great base up North that'd solve everythin'--pretty funny, comin' from a Yank. They always thought the North was better, right?

"Something isn't right." Louis's announcement finally made Ellis open his eyes, blinkin' a little to adjust to the fact that it was night time. Nothin' really jumped out as being an issue right away for Ellis.

_Shit, what if it's the truck?_ Ellis sat up a bit, tryin' to listen for any weird noises. Nothin'. "It ain't the truck, is it? 'Cause I've been workin' on her for years now, and she ain't s'posed to be fussin' none."

Louis shook his head. "No, the truck's fine--but this is the coordinates that they gave us." He slowed the truck to a stop, then pulled out his map and pointed right at the place he'd circled. "This is still just a highway." He sighed. "I don't understand."

"I do." Nick pulled out a cigarette, sighin' real loudly. "You didn't tell them we were coming by truck, did you?" He rolled his window down and lit his cigarette, leanin' out a little. "They thought we were coming by foot. So they gave us a location that'd take a few days for us to reach. Either they planned on snagging us in a trap, or they planned on leading us to the actual base once we got here."

Ellis frowned, rubbin' at his chin. "So.... _shit_. That means that no matter what, we ain't gettin' to that base. We can't really afford to sit put here for a few days, and unless it's right on this here road, we'd be takin' a hell of a risk to go off road and find it." He sighed. This was tough.

He briefly considered suggestin' that they head back, but just as quickly dashed it. In a way, he kinda liked how they'd left it. His ma and friend were buried, and he said his goodbyes. They took the shit they needed and left the rest. If they went back now, that other group could swing in and ransack the place, then drag them all kickin' and screamin' into their creepy cult.

"Shit." He rubbed at his arms. It was gettin' chilly at night again. "What the hell are we gonna do?"

Ro' leaned over and handed Louis somethin'. Turned out it was a faded lookin' list of somethin' on a huge piece of paper. "Thanks, Rochelle." Louis grimaced, then tapped the paper. "There. That's...oh, I'd say another fifty minutes down the road. We'll stay there for the night, and head out tomorrow."

 

* * *

 

 

The list turned out to be an old CEDA flyer designed to let folks know about local safehouses. Of course, Ellis hadn't known that--they weren't called safehouses on the paper. Apparently the government had been usin' the secured buildings and rooms as places for their workers to setup shop. Ellis couldn't even believe the reason, either.

They'd been tryin' to _cure_ the zombies.

He'd heard some wacky shit in his day, but that really took the cake. In the first few weeks of infection, they'd been seriously tryin' to cure it. It took them another week or so to mobilize the military, and by then it'd been way too late. All that was left of CEDA now was their safehouses--and from what he'd heard from the Northerners, a lot of those were startin' to go, too.

This safehouse looked pretty nice. Too far inland to get hit by any bad storms, too far away from anythin' big to be viable as a base. Least, that was how Ellis saw it. He couldn't really tell what it'd been used for before the zombies came. It seemed too far away from anythin' else, and the setup of it was too weird.

They parked the truck and swept around the place, clearin' out the few zombies loiterin' around it. Real thin zombies, too, like they hadn't been eatin' for a long time. Ellis stuck close to Nick--for once not _just_ for some stupid crush. Nick was one of the older fellas, him and Francis. Francis still wasn't really that warm to Ellis. Friendly, but he didn't seem like he'd be up for answerin' simple questions.

"Hey, er, Nick?" He didn't get a response, so he charged on ahead with it, anyway. "What all was this used for before the zombies came? I ain't seen nothin' like this before."

Nick gave him a weird look when he said that, almost like it was strange to hear someone say that they'd never seen this kind of buildin' before. "It's a rest stop. You find 'em all over highways. Used to be tons of people driving on long trips, and sometimes you need to take a piss between towns. So. These things exist." He squinted as they came around to the front of the building. "This one's a little bit bigger. Probably used to have info on some historical thing nearby. Not a fast food one, but it might have some vending machines. I doubt any of it's still edible."

Ellis followed Nick into the safehouse, lookin' around at the strange sight within. It looked just about untouched by the infection. Barely even a single pamphlet was out of place. There was a neat little box on a table labeled "CEDA TESTING KIT" with tons of shit scattered out around it. Just as dusty as everythin' else. Had a radio next to it, too.

There were a few skeletons lyin' nearby, so Ellis tentatively poked around. A pistol was near 'em, which he quickly pocketed. Skeletons weren't nothin' to really fret about, not when they were so common. He wasn't used to seein' any up close, though. Somethin' about the faces and those big, empty sockets was unnerving as hell. He danced back with a nervous little laugh, expectin' to hear Nick make a remark.

But, he didn't. He was too busy lookin' over the skeletons with this odd look on his face. Almost like there was something important about these ones. Ellis just shrugged and set about lookin' over the rest of the safehouse. It was pretty small. Only had the man lobby, some vendin' machines, and some restrooms. Ellis was _just_ paranoid enough to check both restrooms to be absolutely certain that they didn't have no zombies in 'em.

Luckily, both restrooms were empty. Dark and creepy, but empty. The vendin' machines still had all of the brightly colored packages inside, but Ellis'd learned years ago that those didn't mean shit. Usually if you opened one, it'd either be stale to the point of bein' inedible, or it'd just be filled with mold. He'd even opened a bag of chips once and found it to be totally empty, save for a little bit of dust at the bottom.

Sighin', he headed back out to the lobby, frownin' as he saw the whole group crowdin' around those skeletons now. Nick and Francis were up front, with Nick lookin' through all of the shit they'd left. Ro' and Louis were hoverin' nearby--although Louis went back to settin' up the pillows and sleepin' bags they'd brought along.

"So." Nick tapped one of the papers. "Looks like these guys heard the news and realized that they were isolated. I think they operated out here for at least a month after the infection hit. Maybe a bit longer. Their reports stopped coming in regularly after two weeks." He glanced back, noddin' over to Ro'. "One of them was bitten, but wasn't turning into a zombie. That's some goddamn direct contact. They thought they could make a vaccine from that."

Curious, Ellis inched closer. He could see that the case was sealed tight. Was it a vacuum seal? Shit, what if they _did_ make a vaccine? What if there _was_ a cure in there?

As if readin' his thoughts, Ro' spoke up. She'd been lookin' through the reports. "So...they made a vaccine. They had the cure _right here_." She covered her mouth briefly, lookin' at Nick like he'd have the answers. " _Why_ didn't they go public with it?"

Thousands of conspiracy theories floated around in Ellis's head. Louis looked up from the work he was doin'. Francis just cringed and practically rushed over to help Louis with settin' up their beds for the night.

Nick's tone was flat. Defeated soundin'. "This was at least a month after the infection, Rochelle. They had no way to deliver this vaccine. No government to give it to, no military. No way to pin down an infected person and inject them with the cure." Nick looked over at the skeletons, then glanced at the pistol that Ellis was still awkwardly holdin' out. "They held out as long as they could, listened to the radio until the power went out, and that was it."


	13. Entries

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Might be a bit depressing for those who are sensitive to bleak material (this chapter can be skipped without losing the main plotline if you are squeamish about that)

Usually it wasn't real hard to get to bed. Ellis was pretty tuckered out most days, either from work or from stress. It'd been rough since his ma had died, and rougher still since Keith went, but he'd still gotten to sleep.

This was different.

There was a _cure_.

It'd been _so close_ to where they'd been. Weren't even a day away from where they'd all been. Where a whole big city'd been. But them CEDA folks hadn't had a way to radio out. No car, either, from what he could tell. He'd thought they were supposed to have some kind of vehicle--they had to get here somehow, after all.

He'd also seen CEDA vehicles before. They were big. Probably had more than two people in 'em, in fact. As he thought about it, a sad little story popped up in his head. Probably some of 'em gave up and ran off, and the two folks left behind kept on workin'.

_I can't imagine what that'd be like._ Ellis studied the ceiling. Stained, but he couldn't tell from what. Looked cheaply made. Lot of shit was cheaply made back then. He chewed at his lip, thoughts slowly going back to the skeletons.

Ro' threw them outside. Said she weren't comfortable sleepin' with them there. Apparently that weren't normal for them. Apparently they had no problem sharin' rooms with the dead. Then again, they'd never been in a room with folks that'd been almost-saviors before.

What had they done when they found the cure?

Ellis rolled off of his sleeping bag, standing up as quietly as he could. Once he was sure that nobody was gettin' up, he made his way back over to that table. The journal was right on top, sittin' pretty.

_I just need to know._

Flippin' through it was tedious. First few weeks were full of borin' shit. Scientific soundin' numbers, blood cell counts, poorly done sketches of the zombies with lists of different traits. A few extra notes on them Witches, notin' how they seemed to be the closest to bein' healthy. Estimations of how long it'd take the infection to run its course. Sort of funny to see them predict that it'd last a few weeks at most. If that were true, then there'd be hardly any zombies left by now. Just folks that'd somehow missed out on bein' infected. Funny to think about how wrong they'd been.

Then he got to the first journal entry that skipped a day.

Entry #17 100409 -

_Amanda, Roy, Robert, and Brad left us here. Took the van and left. We're not authorized to leave yet. The military has Pennsylvania under Martial Law, but this isn't Pennsylvania. I think that they're afraid of the military spreading its influence down here. Reports haven't been kind from up North. - J_

_Can't believe they ditched us. Patient #4 is currently experiencing extreme signs of distress. All five patients need to be kept strapped down on their sides due to frequent vomiting. Patient #3 choked on own vomit. Took us several hours without our full crew to move the patients into a safer position. - M_

Entry #18 102709 -

_I can't believe that Mark was bitten. He tried to hide it from me. He could have killed me. I've filled out a report, but I get the feeling that no one is going to read that report. The radio has been silent for two weeks now. I have Mark restrained in the room with the infected. Despite none of them having food, none of them have starved to death. Mark is hungry. - J_

Entry #19 103009 -

_Mark has not turned. This is longer than any documented case. The other infected are all unified in trying to kill him. I have ~~sens-~~ since released him. There have been multiple infected outside. Mark agreed to capture another one. This one had a holstered pistol and a medical kit. It is CEDA issue. I believe that some people have chosen to try and survive without the assistance of the government. - J_

_It hurts when they bite and claw me, but not as significantly as it should. While I should be infected with the green flu, I am not. Furthermore, my wounds should be infected with something. The human mouth is not known for being clean, and these mouths are certainly not clean. Did the infection do something different to me? - M_

Entry #20 111509 -

_After multiple blood tests, we have successfully synthesized a cure from Mark's infected blood. Attempting to administer it on infected patients now. - J_

_I'm cautiously optimistic. - M_

Entry #21 111609 -

_Patients have all successfully recovered from infection. Unfortunately, the infection was keeping them alive. I suspect that we should have been feeding them, even if it would have been risky. When we woke up, all patients had returned to a healthy skin tone and lacked the basic symptoms of infection. However, each one was dead. - J_

_I took them out back and buried them. Not many ~~zombies~~ infected outside today. Even if this does not work, it is still a successful weapon to neutralize them. - M_

Entry #22 111809 -

_We explored nearby to see if any cars were abandoned. They were not. We checked the bodies of the infected nearby and found one cellular device. The battery was dead. We charged it using an old science fair trick and some junk back in the safehouse. There's no service. Emergency lines are all down. Operator is down. - J_

_I know something about radios, but the radio we have is only for receiving signals. Any attempt to communicate with our CEDA supervisors has been met with silence for quite some time._

_We have the cure, but no one knows that we have it. - M_

Entry #23 112509 -

_We heard the radio come to life today. Exciting news! The military is doing sweeps in Georgia. Does this mean that their efforts in Pennsylvania were successful? - J_

_Jack has us both writing in the journal to feel better about ourselves, but I can see that he hasn't been writing, either. Still, the radio signal sounded promising. We lost power today. I think that Spitter we saw earlier destroyed the power supply. Radio only has power for a few more days on those batteries. I suggested that we should try to head to a town. Jack is afraid that we might die along the way. The pistol only has one bullet left. - M_

Entry #24 121509 -

_I don't know how to break into a vending machine. We're running low on food. - J_

_I don't think that the military succeeded. Radio or not. I don't think that they succeeded. - M_

Entry #25 122209 -

_I shot Jack in the head. We're both so hungry and weak now that even if we did find a crowbar, I don't think we could open the vending machines. I'm leaving this last note in the hopes that someone finds this. My name is Mark Torus. His name was Jack Chance. We discovered the cure in my blood. There are people who can carry the infection. Carriers. Do not shoot them. I doubt your bullets would do any good against them, anyway. Their blood has the cure within it. I've included our notes on the process to synthesize the cure. By my estimates, one donation of blood from a carrier could potentially neutralize the infection in an entire city._

_But I think it is hopeless to try and cure the world like this. If you find this note, do not open the box next to it. I have sealed the remaining vials of the cure within. They should last indefinitely so long as the seal is not broken. If the seal is broken and there is no proper refrigeration, then they will last for an estimated two weeks. This estimate is rough. Do not open unless you intend to use it._

_We did not test these on those infected that have mutated beyond a mere infection. The Tanks. The Boomers. The Witches. The Hunters. The Spitters. The Jockeys. The Smokers. The Chargers. I do not recommend wasting the cure on them. A group of just a few carriers could theoretically kill any one of these infected with ease. I do recommend that course of action. Do not expect any of the infected to return to life. For their sakes, I pray that they do not. Whatever horrors they have witnessed must be indescribable._

_Final recommendation: deliver cure to a safe location and secure the surrounding town. Population should ideally be no larger than your crew can handle. I highly recommend testing your crew for carriers. Instructions on how to do so are included. For each carrier, I recommend a population of fifty to one hundred. If your crew is small, do not try to tackle any larger than a small town._

_Secure a safe place. Rebuild society within. God rest the United States of America. I can only pray that Canada and Mexico are in a better condition than we are._

_Please, God, do not let this infection cross the seas. It spreads fast._

_As I write this final message, I understand its futility. This is not a primary highway. This rest stop is not well-marked, as many other CEDA-secured buildings are. Regardless, I can only pray that someone finds us._

_If it is safe, bury us. Bury Jack, at least. He is a Christian man, and he would want to be laid to rest. I'm not, but I'd like to dream that someone could have time to save us. We kept in good spirits to the end. - M_

Entry #26 122509 -

_I have not starved to death yet. I don't know how much longer it will take. I spent all day moving to the chair to write. I will spend all night moving back to lie next to Jack. He's already starting to decompose._

_If you are a carrier, by God, put a bullet in your head if you are left to die. It is not a fast death to starve like this. - M_


	14. Plan

Louis was on board with buryin' the two skeletons, even though the rest of the group was gripin' about how dangerous and pointless it was. Ellis thought they were all bein' dumb as hell. Shit, this was the best news he'd heard in a long time! These two deserved a real proper burial, just like ma and Keith.

He even did his best to say a prayer for them. Forgot a couple of the lines, but that wasn't so bad. He got the right feelin' for the message, he reckoned.

Ellis hurried back into the safehouse after he was done layin' the CEDA workers to rest (and lord knows they'd needed it). He carefully folded all of the paperwork into his bag, even taking an extra step by wrappin' them up using a plastic bag. He placed the box in there as well and carefully sealed his bag, then headed back out to meet the group.

"You don't seriously believe that they got a cure, right?" Ro' put a hand on her hip, frowning. "What good would it even do? It's a little bit _late_ to try and fix this mess."

"Hell, I don't know." Ellis shrugged. "But it don't feel right to just leave it here. Their writin' said that anybody findin' it should take it to a town and secure it. Start over."

Shit, had _none_ of them connected the dots yet? Ellis looked over to Louis--it looked like Louis was startin' to catch on, but he wasn't speakin' up. Everyone else just looked like they thought it was a waste of time to bring it.

"But what I do know is this." He took a step forward, tryin' real hard to sound like a leader. "We're goin' up to that base in Canada, right? And y'all heard rumors that it's big, right? Well, if we bring them the cure, I bet it can get spread around there." Ellis could see them catchin' on, even if none of them were all that thrilled. "So, that's the plan! We go up there, bring the cure, and...and...and everythin' can restart up there."

Nick looked the least convinced of them all. Only fittin' that he was the one to actually talk. "I don't buy it. So we cure some zombies up in Canada. What the hell's that gonna do?" He folded his arms across his chest, scowlin'. "Look, kid, even if we somehow got a whole town cleared up, the rest of the goddamn continent is crawling with zombies. And if that base _isn't_ bullshit, we're probably looking at, what, twenty people? Maybe more? Probably less."

Ellis normally would've just backed off. Nick was real good at soundin' like he knew what he was sayin'. Worse, he was bringin' up some good points. It seemed pretty much impossible for this to turn around. Ellis'd seen a world map before. Savannah was so, so very tiny compared to the whole landmass that they were on. Zombies were probably all over it, too. Huge numbers of 'em. Not a lot of people, either.

He could remember learnin' about how hard it was just to keep a city runnin'. There needed to be folks who knew how to make the materials, folks who could transport the materials, folks who could harvest resources--and folks to transport those resources, folks who could fix broken things, folks who could build things, and folks who could do technical things. There were so many parts of life that just couldn't work with a tiny population. They'd need to go back to how things used to be a long time ago--at least for a while.

Everybody was startin' to get into the truck. _Shit, I was off daydreamin' again, wasn't I?_ Ellis climbed into the truck, awkwardly seated halfway on Nick's lap again. He kept the bag safely nestled on his own lap, both arms wrapped around it. He knew that he was ready to do anythin' to keep it safe.

"Y'all're wrong, Nick." He looked over at the Northerner. "I mean--y'all ain't _wrong_ wrong, but y'all ain't right." Ellis smiled. "Sure, there won't be a ton of folks there. And sure, it ain't like we're gonna save the whole world by doin' this. We might even get up there and find that there ain't nobody there--or that the folks who are there ain't even a little friendly."

He patted the bag softly, watching Nick's expression soften a little. "But the way I see it? That ain't the point. Bible spoke of Adam and Eve creatin' all of us, right? Well, even if y'all don't believe that there good book, y'all gotta believe that we started out somethin' like that. Monkeys, or Neanderthals, or whatever it was--it ain't like a million folks just blinked into the world at the same time. So long as it ain't just a whole bunch of dudes up there, it should be possible to start over."

Louis coughed awkwardly. "Uh--let's _hope_ it's not a bunch of dudes up there. If Rochelle hears you talking like that, she'll probably kick your ass all the way back to Savannah."

Ellis laughed. "Man, I hear you there, Louis." He wriggled around to get a bit more comfortable once the truck got back on the highway. "They had some interestin' stuff in that there journal, too. Apparently it ain't just that we're all immune to that zombie sickness. Some folks're carriers."

" _Carriers_?" Nick scratched an itch under his chin. "That doesn't sound good. Usually if someone _carries_ an illness, then it's dormant in them."

"Well, it _sounded_ good in their notes. Hang on, let me look." Ellis frowned. He pulled the paperwork back out again, leafin' through everything until he found what he needed. "Higher pain tolerance, ability to go longer without the basic necessities, less sleep to function..." He kept flippin' through for a while, frownin' more than he'd been before. "One of them'd been bitten', but he was a carrier. He was writin' all about how he could take so many more bites and claws than a person should be able to, and it hurt--but it weren't that bad."

Nick hummed, glancin' back. "I'd bet ten cans of food that Francis is a carrier, then." He smirked. "Guess I'm one, too. We've both taken some shit that should've killed us. Drops that should've broken legs. Punches that should've fractured ribs. Spitter shit that should've melted our heads off." He shrugged. "But what good does that do us?"

Ellis worked on keepin' it to himself that his heart was hurtin'. So Keith _hadn't_ been a carrier, then. He'd just been immune. Otherwise, he would've walked off that Spitter. It wouldn't've got him. "Well, the carrier dude said in his writin' that a small group of carriers could take down hundreds of zombies all on their own." Ellis put the papers back, then sealed up the bag. "So, I figure that if this base has any folks at all, we figure out who's a carrier and who ain't a carrier, and then we can take on clearin' out the area. Hell, I bet they got a head start on it."

"Yeah?" The Northerner snorted. "And what if there _ain't_ a base up there. You think of that one, sport?" He started chewin' on his nails. "What if we make it all the way up to Canada--somehow, I mean, it's gonna be a goddamn _miracle_ if we make it across an entire country in the first place--and it turns out that this rumor's a big lie?"

He hadn't been thinkin' that far ahead. _Well, you were sayin' you wanted to start thinkin' that far ahead. That's what folks do, right? So **think** , man!_ Ellis breathed in deeply, starin' down at his bag. "Well. We see if there's a safehouse nearby, or a place we can secure or somethin', and we secure it." The idea clicked into his head, as risky as it'd be. "The cure here, it works on them zombies. If we can catch some infected folks that're lookin' healthy enough and give 'em the cure, we might have more folks with us. I reckon they'd be carriers."

Nick sighed. "Sounds risky as shit. How do we catch a _zombie_?"

"Hell, I don't know." Ellis felt himself gettin' a little frustrated. "But we've got loads of time to figure that out, right? It ain't like we'll get to Canada today. And it ain't like it's all on _me_ to figure this out, neither." He saw how surprised Nick looked when he said that. _Bet you weren't expectin' that, Mr. gamblin' man._ Ellis grinned crookedly. "We're all in this together, man. Y'all seem to want us all to just give up and struggle through every day, hopin' that there's an infinite supply of food that we can get to. I'm sayin' that we should try for somethin' more. Y'all never know when someone's gonna die, way things are now. I wanna change that. I want us to find a place some day that's _so_ safe, that we all go to bed and sleep for a whole eight hours, with nobody tryin' to take shifts. Maybe even no food rationin'. Maybe even regular bathin'! Man, I don't wanna survive. I wanna _live_!"

Louis whistled. "Amen to that! I don't wanna be marching around waiting for all of us to die. I want some place that's so safe that I _know_ we won't get screwed over." He tapped at the steering wheel, turning off of the highway they were on. Apparently it was some sort of road that connected two different highways, 'cause now they were on a new road that was just as big as the highway they'd been on.

"I mean, let's face it." Louis drove around a zombie--as much fun as it'd probably be to run one over, Ellis was glad that he didn't need to yell at Louis for tryin'. Hittin' a zombie only worked so many times before a vehicle started gettin' seriously tore up. "If we just keep going day to day, safehouse to safehouse, we're gonna run into some problems."

Nick huffed. "Oh yeah? What, you mean the zombies? Louis, _c'mon_. We've all been doing this for fifteen goddamn years. What's the _worst_ that's gonna happen?"

"I'll tell you." Louis glanced over at them both, then went right back to lookin' at the road. "The obvious one is that we'll all start getting older. Older we are, the slower and weaker we'll get. These zombies--I don't know if they even age, or if it even matters if they're old or not. Point is that they all run very fast. Faster than most people, in fact. As soon as somebody's too old? They're dead. But that's the least of our worries, honestly."

"For starters? Food. Food's been getting rough lately. Most stored food only lasts for five years. Some last for ten. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel at fifteen." He shook his head. "So what happens in twenty years? Thirty? Fifty? I mean, it'd be rough enough if we were just looking for bags of flour. We're all not getting the nutrients that we should be getting, especially not on this, er, _unique_ diet of flour-water. It's basically the same as eating a totally unflavored tortilla. We don't even have any oil to keep it from sticking to the pan." Louis laughed softly. "So we've got to start thinking ahead. Securing a place where we can plant food? That's what matters. I don't even care if it's in the soil or not. We find some UV lights? We can hook those up in a room and grow anything, anywhere. Or even just make a greenhouse. I mean, we've got all of the time in the world, right? If we all looked for this stuff, I'm sure we could find the basic things needed to set it all up."

Louis was hittin' some points that Ellis hadn't really been thinkin' about. They were definitely fightin' the clock in a ton of ways. Once they all got old enough, they weren't gonna be able to keep up fightin'. That'd be a hell of an awful way to go: everybody dyin' out from old age. Worse than that, they were gonna need some more sources of food than gettin' lucky. Even those powdered food rations probably wouldn't last forever.

_Come to think of it._..Ellis nodded. "It's even _worse_ than that, man. Like, sometimes, a roof caves in and a bunch of rain ruins all of the food stuff in a store. Or a zombie dies and the blood and puke seeps into all them bags and ruins the flour and shit." He huffed. "We sure can't keep relyin' on luck to get us everythin'."


	15. Jarring

Days were startin' to blur by. Stop the truck at a safehouse, eat, drink, piss, take turns watchin' while everybody else slept, get in the truck, drive to the next safehouse. Rinse, repeat. Only shoot zombies if they got in the way. Plan a stop for gas when the truck was at a quarter tank, just in case things got messy.

Ellis never thought he'd be thinkin' it, but this apocalypse was gettin' _boring_.

Louis talked, sometimes. Usually it'd just be about the trees in the area they were in. Back before the zombies came, he'd been growin' up in an urban area up in Pennsylvania. Seein' trees that were big like that without bein' in a park was special to him. Shit, they just looked like trees to Ellis--but he wasn't ready to rain on Louis's parade.

Besides, it was nice to hear him talkin'. Hear _anybody_ talkin', really. He could tell that Ro' and Francis were chatterin', but neither of them were audible over the sound of wind whippin' by when they got to drivin'. It looked like it was a private conversation, the sort that Ellis might expect out of a sappy romance novel. He tried not to look back too often, 'cause whenever Ro' caught someone lookin' her face'd get all serious again and she'd go back to scowlin' at the treeline.

_I kinda wish we were back there_. He cast a glance over at Nick. Dude was sleepin', head restin' on the window. He'd tried just the day before to flirt with Nick, and Nick'd been cold about it. It stung. Ellis'd thought he'd had a shot, especially after how Nick'd been treatin' him back in Savannah.

But then Louis'd admitted that he'd been makin' a face. He hadn't meant to, he'd just been findin' it funny how much Nick's eyes lit up. That'd made Nick shut down real quick. Guess he didn't like it when folks made fun of _him_ for a change.

"I think..." Louis slowed down, then pulled off of an exit ramp. "Yeah, okay. We have to switch highways again. This one should take us all the way to this fabled base." He smiled apologetically. "I, well, I don't really know the _exact_ location of it, but if it's as big as the rumors make it sound, we _should_ be able to find it once we get close enough."

Ellis brightened. "Hell yeah, we will! I bet there's gonna be signs all over the place, just like how they've got signs for them safehouses." He leaned forward a little, grinnin' at Louis. "I bet they're gonna be _so_ excited that we've got a cure, man. After all these years, there just might be some _safety_."

Louis turned to look at him, laughing. "That's right! And even if this base isn't real, we'll still be able to set up shop and make that base _ourselves_ if we've gotta!"

Ellis's expression jarringly changed to one of abject horror, barely getting a single word out of his mouth before a red blur behind Louis smashed into the truck.


	16. Detour

"Augh, _God_ , what the _hell_ -" Ellis coughed, spitting up some blood. Everything sounded _quiet_. Well, quiet in comparison. Sounds were slowly bleedin' back in. Somethin' was on fire.

He staggered up to his feet, blinking rapidly to get the smoke out of his eyes. He'd been thrown out on the street when that thing hit them--the lack of a seat belt probably saved his ass. Nick was strugglin' to his feet not too far away.

The truck was on fire.

Ellis ran to it in a hurry, tuggin' Louis out of the wreck with all of his might. He felt Nick and Francis joinin' in, easily popping Louis free. "Shit, is he gonna be alright?!" Ellis watched them for a moment before grabbing his bag from the passenger's side of the truck. _Lord, I hope the cure ain't busted up._

Wait.

Shit.

"Where the hell's Ro'?" Ellis staggered away from the truck, then checked in the truck bed. He was thankful that she weren't in there, but she didn't seem to be anywhere else, either. He could see Francis runnin' around in a panic, too, leavin' Nick to try and tend to Louis.

Ro' wasn't anywhere on the street. It didn't make sense--she wouldn't go runnin' off and leave the rest of them, would she? Ellis didn't know her well enough to know for sure. He also knew that he trusted her not to be that kind of person.

And that got sealed in his head firmly when he saw Bill's machete. She sure wouldn't leave _that_ behind if she was goin' somewhere. He looked around, heart racin'. That loud of a sound was bound to draw in zombies.

_Think, man, think._ Ellis could remember what'd hit them. It'd been a red vehicle. He couldn't remember what the driver'd looked like, just that it'd been barrelin' towards them at an unholy speed.

"Well." Nick had a half-awake Louis slung over his shoulder, lookin' at both of them expectantly. "I guess we're all carriers. Barely a scratch on any of us, and Louis just about got hit head-on by that car." He nodded over to the red car, which was sittin' in a ditch nearby. Tires were still spinnin', like the person inside was still tryin' to get out of the ditch.

The four of them headed over, with Louis groggily slurrin' out nonsense the whole way. Nick traded off, havin' Francis switch over to keepin' Louis upright. Ellis stayed back, watchin' Nick get close to the car.

He just about jumped ten feet when Nick pulled out a gun and shot the driver. The wheels kept on spinnin', even with the driver dead. Ellis watched, numb as Nick leaned in and shut the car down. Sure, that person'd hit them and wrecked their truck--was that really reason enough to _kill_ somebody?

"This was a goddamn trap." Nick holstered his gun as he backed out, grimacing. "Someone stuck a zombie in a car and bound their foot to the gas pedal. Locked the steering wheel." His lip curled. "I guess we better see if we can figure out who the hell did this."

"We've gotta find Rochelle, too." Francis sounded concerned. "We're not leaving her behind."

Nick snorted. "Funny, I think we'll find her if we find these guys."

Francis frowned. "No way, she wouldn't ditch us for a bunch of assholes."

"No, Francis, I don't think she would." Nick rolled his eyes. "I think they hit us to get her."

"Oh." Francis thought about that for a moment. "Wait. Why would they do that?"

For once, Ellis was real glad that things got silent after that.

 

* * *

 

 

They ended up havin' to set up in a sort-of safe house for the night. It'd been a safehouse at some point. The door was still faithfully in place, but the giant hole in the wall next to it indicated that a Tank'd come through at some point and proven that a good door wasn't the only thing that a safehouse needed.

Francis was a mess. He kept insistin' that he could go out and get her. Somehow. Like he'd be able to go out all on his own and take out however many guys he needed to. " _Rambo style_ ", as he put it. He was pacin' around and lookin' out in the direction that the car'd come from. Looked kinda scared, if Ellis were bein' honest.

Nick'd explained that they probably didn't have their base in that direction. It'd be too risky; if someone survived one of those strikes that they didn't want to see alive, someone could march right up to their base and get revenge. If the base they were dealin' with was big enough, that wouldn't matter to them--but chances were that if their base _was_ big, it didn't get big from making stupid and reckless decisions.

The decision was made to sleep in shifts; Francis took the first shift, since he was too frazzled to get any sleep. Nick took second. Ellis was gonna take third. That'd been the plan. But Ellis couldn't stop thinkin' about how fast the crash'd been.

One moment, they'd all been laughin' and carryin' on. Francis and Ro' were flirtin'. Nick was takin' a nap. Louis was excited to get to this cool base up in Canada. Next moment? They'd all been spittin' up blood and countin' teeth. Worse, Ro' was missin'. Didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why.

_Man, what the hell even is a rocket scientist? Never did get that sayin'._

"Hey. Ellis." Nick sat down next to him. "Shit--you didn't sleep at all?"

Ellis cringed. "Naw. Can't. I mean, it don't feel safe." He scratched the back of his head, feelin' Nick's eyes borin' into his skull. Judgin' him. Felt like Nick knew he was lyin'. "....I'm worried about Ro'. What if she's gettin' hurt right now, and we're all sittin' here with our thumbs up our butts? Worse, how're we even gonna start lookin' for her?"

Nick breathed in deeply, starin' at the floor. "Well. One step at a time, kiddo." He rubbed at his eyes, then settled down. "This town's really small. Looks like one of those towns that people used to just drive through. Probably has a town hall, a library, a post office, and a church. Maybe a corner store. Maybe."

He squinted outside, like he expected to see some clue out there. Nothin'. "So, they have to be setup on a farm. A church has too many windows--it's too hard to defend. A library's too stuffy, and would take a lot of effort to clear out for using as a base. Post office is too small. They might be using that, though."

"So, y'all think a farm's the best bet?" Ellis thought about it. "Why do y'all think that? I mean, what's a farm got that the rest of these places ain't got? Farm's just a house, right?"

"Not just a house." Nick smirked. "Usually, a farm has at least one field. I'd bet that it'd be pretty easy to setup an electric fence around the perimeter, if there wasn't one already. If they farm the fields, they'd have a food source. Even one field would probably make enough food to feed a goddamn army for a year if they rationed it enough.All of that flat area would make it easy to see zombies coming from a distance."

He waved at the safehouse door. "That thing still has to be fastened in somehow. Take some tools, remove a safehouse door, set it up at the farm, reinforce walls and windows." Nick sighed. "If they're at a farm, they might have a fortress."

Ellis hadn't expected Nick to know that much about farms. "Do...y'all have experience with that?"

There was a stretch of silence, which Ellis was startin' to get used to. Nick did that a lot, it seemed. Whenever he got to thinkin' about somethin' heavy, he got real quiet.

"Yes." Nick sighed. "Francis was a hard worker while we are at that farm. But, uh, the people were cruel. They knew that Francis was...well." He coughed. "I think you can tell that Francis ain't exactly the brightest guy around. They'd send him out on suicidal supply runs constantly, and then they'd punish him for shit that was unreasonable, like not bringing back enough food on a supply run. His meals were always cut."

Nick shook his head. "They were using him. Seeing how far they could go before he'd protest. I overheard them saying that they were planning on sending him out to get rid of him. Something about all of his tattoos was pissing off the assholes running the place. They were trying to kill him without doing it directly. Goddamn cowards were trying to squeeze him dry."

"Jesus." Ellis shivered, eyes wide. He couldn't imagine folks treatin' other folks like that. Did all these Northern outposts have nothin' better to do besides attack uninfected people? "What'd y'all do?"

"Got the hell out." Nick snorted. "I was out on a pretty run-of-the-mill supply run with two other guys, so I waited until there was some distance between me and them and went running to catch Francis before he made it to the Witch hotspot they were sending him to. Francis...got it. We fought for a few days after that. He, uh, wanted me to go back. It was pretty good there: tons of food, shelter, and medicine. But I, uh, I couldn't do it."

Ellis smirked. "Well, well, someone's got a heart after all."

Nick smirked right back. "Yeah, well. Don't go telling anybody about it, kiddo. I don't want word getting out that I'm a huge softie."


	17. Plan

As it turns out, lookin' for someone when you have no clues is a little bit tricky. The town didn't look much different from anythin' else that Ellis'd seen. Busted up, old lookin' buildings with interiors caked in dust and cobwebs, tons of long-dead zombies, and rusted vehicles. Nothin' that was screamin' _"base full of evil kidnappers"_ in sight.

Ro' had to be _somewhere_ nearby. If someone had setup a trap, then they had to be visitin' the town enough to make the traps. Beyond that, they were all pretty clueless. Louis was thinkin' out loud, mostly trying to figure out what kind of people would destroy two workin' vehicles to kidnap a woman. Francis was wonderin' about how many people they had, and how well armed they were.

Nick was quiet, 'cept for whenever he'd grumble out that it was _obvious_ why they'd put in that much effort to get a woman, or that they probably were fairly significantly armed if they could spare a functional car. They'd even checked back: no one had returned to scrap either vehicle or to even loot them for any supplies. They'd been forced to abandon some supplies, but surprisingly all of the food and water they'd left had still been there.

Ellis was havin' some bad thoughts of his own, but didn't bother sharin' 'em. Too much bad shit out in the air already. _I bet they ain't in this town._ He kicked a bottle aside, watchin' it roll down the road until it bumped into a sidewalk. _I bet they've got a base somewhere else._

He'd believed, at first, that they had to be setup somewhere in town. Just made sense for them to set traps and stop folks who came along. Defense, right? Except it wasn't addin' up. The town itself didn't look like it'd been explored much. Not too many zombies runnin' around, and a whole mess of supplies. Weren't no surprise that the people'd left their supplies behind--just about every corner store was still stocked to the gills with useful shit.

The real smokin' gun was the fact that they'd even had that trap ready.

Cars took fuel. Cars needed to be turned on. Cars had batteries. That wasn't something that could be left on and forgotten about. The folks that'd set it up would've needed to be aware of when to turn it on. The timin', too, had to be perfect. They had to know when someone was comin'.

Cars weren't slow. Sure, a truck was slower than some cars, but they'd been goin' a good sixty miles an hour. That weren't somethin' that could be spotted from the edge of town. That trap had to have been setup ahead of time, in anticipation of them. Hell, they hadn't run into any other traps like it in the town. It'd been specifically setup to catch them.

Somethin' clicked in his head. "Guys? I think they were usin' radios." He watched them all turn to look at him, holdin' his chin up. How had he not noticed before that they were all taller than him? "That was a pretty complicated trap to get the timin' down for, so they had to have somebody callin' in ahead of time when we were gettin' where we were gettin'."

That realization made them all look real thoughtful. Louis snapped his fingers. "So, like a lookout, maybe?" He frowned. "But, that doesn't really help us. I mean, a lookout could've been in any of the buildings along the way. All that a radio needs is a basic generator, or a solar panel. Something like that to keep the power going." He sighed. "I guess we've gotta retrace our steps and see if we can find the building that sighted us."

Nick grunted. "No way in hell." He looked back down the road, lip curlin'. "If we go that way, we're gonna be walking _right_ along their line of sight. They'll know we're coming." Nick seemed to glance at their weapons; they were all armed, of course, but shootin' people weren't the same as shootin' zombies. "I'm not charging headfirst into another trap, 'k? Best case scenario, they see us coming and _don't_ shoot us on sight. Worst case? They have a goddamn army and drop us into a zombie pit to get eaten alive."

"The zombies don't eat people, Nick-"

"Yeah, well they don't pet you and give you hugs either, Louis." Nick was lookin' for a fight, that much was obvious.

"I've got an idea." Francis shrugged, seemingly unaffected by the bewildered look on Nick's face. "I mean, a lookout's gonna be really shitty if you just stick them in a house. Or a roof. All of these buildings are pretty short. You wouldn't be able to see very far without the other buildings getting in your way."

He scanned the horizon, then pointed off in the distance. "See that? Looks like some kind of tower up there. Not a radio tower, but like-" Francis flailed for a moment. "Watchtower! That's what it is. Maybe not a prison watchtower, but, I know a lot of big parks have watchtowers in them."

"I didn't know you liked going on nature hikes, Francis." Louis smiled.

"Nope." Francis was positively beamin'. "A lot of those watchtowers were abandoned during the winter, so they made great spots to hide loot when you were trying to lay low."

 

* * *

 

 

Even if Francis was wrong, it still beat their original plans. The only problem was tryin' to sneak up on a tower that far away. Chances were that they'd be keepin' an eye out up there for anyone tryin' to approach 'em. A brief plan was hatched to use the sewer system, but Nick was whinin' way too much to consider it. Besides, the sewer system probably wouldn't run far enough to get them to the watchtower--and wherever they popped out would most definitely be right in their line of sight.

Louis figured that they could use the buildings as cover. It'd be easy enough to walk through those, especially since most of the doors had long since been broken down by passin' infected. They'd run out of buildings once they hit the treeline, of course, but the trees'd be more than enough cover.

Or, they'd just look like zombies to the watchtower and get their asses shot.

It was risky, and stupid.

But they needed to save Ro'.

Ellis wasn't about to let nobody get left behind. He was sick of folks dyin', and even if he didn't know these folks all that well, he already considered them to be family, in a way.

It made him smile to know that the rest of 'em clearly agreed, 'cause he hadn't heard a single one of them suggest that they leave her behind. Not even Nick.


	18. Trees

 Sneakin' through a whole town was a lot harder than it'd sounded when they'd been talkin' it out. Nick and Francis definitely knew more about it, pickin' out specific routes to take and timin' it so that they barely even showed a shoe in the open for more than a second. Ellis just kept his head down and kept movin'. That was about all he could do.

Guns were off-limits, too. They didn't know how far sound could carry, but gunfire would just draw more zombies to them. even if the folks up at the watchtower couldn't hear 'em. That meant havin' to get real close with the infected. Everybody was keepin' their mouths shut--too much zombie blood flyin' around. Carrier or not, zombie blood sounded like it'd taste nasty. Sure as shit couldn't be good for you.

It was evenin' by the time they got out to the woods. Ellis hadn't thought much about the tower they were headin' to until the moment that his boots hit the rotting leaves beneath the trees. It was loud. Each dead leaf crunched, and with thousands of 'em blanketin' the ground, that made every step sound like dumpin' a box of nails on the floor.

There weren't a solution to that, though. No rocks to walk on, and the trees all had branches that were way too high to go climbin'. Ellis sort of doubted that Nick would be willin' to swing around in the trees, anyway. Everybody was on edge, heads all swingin' around constantly. Had to be. Sure, zombies were gonna be loud and runnin'--but that was a problem, too. Zombies didn't go runnin' unless they saw somethin', and if some zombies started screamin' and tearin' through the woods, the folks they were sneakin' up on would surely know.

Hell, now that Ellis was lookin' at the trees, he could see that someone'd gone through and _cut_ most of the lower branches. Looked like someone'd taken the time to make sure that the whole place was perfect for catchin' folks. Weren't even a way to try and be silent.

Nick had a real scary look on his face when Ellis glanced over at him. He was scowlin' and barin' his teeth, lookin' the part of an action hero. Francis had the same look, in fact. Probably steelin' themselves for a rough fight, now that Ellis thought about it. They had no way of knowin' what they were in for.

Ellis looked over at Louis. Nervous lookin'. That was more up to speed with how Ellis was feelin'. This was gonna be _ugly_ , no matter what. Even if the folks were somehow just as kind as could be, they'd still somehow justified stealin' a person. Only the worst kinds of people would do that. If someone was willin' to steal people, then chances were they'd be willin' to _kill_ people.

_Shit, Louis saw people that ate people, right?_ Ellis cringed. _Wonder what those people were like. They probably kidnapped people, too. God, and we left Ro' with these folks for a whole day. What if they're cuttin' her up right now and eatin' her?_

He started walkin' a little faster after that. Whole group saw him speed up and did the same. He doubted that they were thinkin' the same thing, but that probably didn't mean _shit_ : all they saw was him joggin', and figured there was a reason.

Nick suddenly swore louder than any noise that any of 'em had made the whole time, the sound of his voice almost completely drownin' out the groan of a tree and the snap of a rope flickin' back. Nick was hangin' upside-down, a rope wrapped tightly around his ankle. Ellis'd heard about those sorts of traps, but only in the movies. He'd never thought that he'd see a real one.

Francis grabbed onto Nick's torso and tugged him down, ignorin' the awkward positioning and the muffled curses still comin' from Nick. Ellis felt real bad for him; his face was pressin' into the dead leaves below, while Francis was tuggin' a knife from his pocket and sawin' the rope.

The tree snapped back into position again, and Nick crumpled to the ground. Louis peeled the conman's pants back up to the knee, wincin' when he saw that Nick was bleedin' from how fast the rope'd yanked him. " _Good lord_." Louis looked around, nervously applyin' some gauze to it. "I didn't even see it. Do you think there's any other traps around here?"

"Honestly, did y'all have to cut that? Those take time to setup, you know."

All four of 'em whipped around to look at the older lady that was talkin', with both Francis and Louis pullin' a gun reflexively. Ellis helped Nick up to his feet, tryin' his best to look intimidatin'. It was a little hard to glare at an old lady, though, especially since she looked real nice.

She didn't look nothin' like a kidnapper, neither. Ellis'd expected some nasty lookin' dude with no teeth and an ear necklace or somethin'. He sure hadn't been expectin' someone that looked like his _grandma_. She was smilin', too, like she knew not a one of 'em was gonna shoot 'er.

"Where's Rochelle?" Francis was havin' none of that sweet act, though. His eyes narrowed.

"Who?" The old lady frowned, then snapped her fingers. "Ah, y'all mean the sweet woman we picked up yesterday. She was hurt real bad in that crash, so we brought her back to our base."

Francis faltered, nearly droppin' his gun. "She's _hurt_?" He bared his teeth. "It's **your** fault that she's hurt! Take us to her!"

She tilted her head. "Well, y'all ain't in a position to be makin' demands. Y'all are trespassin', and damagin' our property, too." She sighed. "Honestly, men are just the _worst_ about this. Mess makin', trash talkin', disrespectful little dogs. That's what y'all are."

"That's terrific, cupcake." Nick rolled his eyes. "Look, I don't give a shit what your reason was: _your_ people attacked us, and because of that, Rochelle's hurt. And, worse, you stole her away and left us to die. What kind of shitty base is that?"

Louis cringed. "Look, ma'am, we were just passing through. We didn't know that we were trespassing, honest! I've been with Ro' for a very long time now, and we've been through a lot together. I don't want to lose her just because of a misunderstanding."

This was a bit _worse_ than a misunderstandin'. Ellis could understood the diplomatic approach, though. They didn't know what this lady's game was, and they didn't know if they were in danger. Tryin' to threaten someone that had the upper hand was a real bad idea.

" _Please_ , ma'am." Ellis stepped forward--he knew it was a cheap tactic, but he didn't care. He was poutin'. His ma used to tell him all the time that he had a hell of a good pout when he wanted somethin'. Childish, sure, but hopefully the old lady'd be more charitable if she saw that they were kind folks. "Ro', man, she's the closest thing to a leader that we've got. I just lost my best friend and my ma a few days back. I don't want to see no more people die."

She seemed to be thinkin' about what they were all sayin' real carefully. Kept lookin' Ellis right in the eye, too, which was unnervin'. He found himself puttin' his head down, unused to gettin' looked at that sharply. Reminded him of bein' a kid again, and havin' his daddy breathin' down his neck.

"Alright." She sighed. "Y'all're comin' with me. Put those guns away unless y'all want the girls to get violent." She turned away, gesturin' for them to follow. "Don't go strayin' off, neither."

Francis was the last to holster his gun, lookin' tense enough to snap in two. "I hate this." He stomped through the woods after the old lady, shoulders hunched. "How do we know that this lady's gonna take us back to their base?" He grumbled, rollin' his shoulders. "I hate the woods."

Nick groaned. "Jesus, here we go."

"Can both of you quit it?" Louis grimaced. The woods opened up into a clearin' barely fifty feet away, revealin' a path up to the tower. "We were so close..."

The old lady glanced back at them, grinnin' broadly. "We watched you idiots the whole way. Pretty clever to use the town as cover, but once you hit the woods, all y'all stood out like a sore thumb."


	19. Legacy

The watchtower, as it turned out, had been some part of a power plant. Looked more modern than the one that they'd been usin' back in Savannah. Guarded a lot more heavily, too. Whole mess of folks were walkin' on top of the walls--walls that looked fairly new.

"Did y'all _build_ those walls?" Ellis couldn't stop himself. It was impressive if they did. Buildin' anything was always a feat when zombies could come runnin' at any moment.

"Yep." The lady sure did look proud of that, too. "Had to build it in parts. Mixed the cement and poured it in. Tanks can't seem to break through cement if you get the walls thick enough." She waved to the folks on the wall. "Still try to climb it every other week, though. Have to keep most of the girls up on watch all day."

"Sounds like you've got things organized here." Louis smiled, lookin' around at the number of folks that were armed. "No wonder you were able to time a trap like that."

Nick was lookin' at the armed folks, too--but probably not for the same reasons Louis was. "Yeah, sounds _peachy_." His mouth pulled to the side. "What, is this a girls-only club?"

The old lady just laughed at him for a moment, then nodded. "It is. We find that men just get distracted these days. Seems like the good ones all died out when the zombies came, and we got left with a bunch of wife-beatin' assholes." She shrugged. "We saw your truck and thought it was another group of men thinking that they owned the whole world."

Francis frowned. "Well, Rochelle was out in the open with me. Did you guys not see her? 'Cause she was right there."

"No, we didn't, and I am sorry for that." She sighed. "Honestly, we're only bringing you in here so she can confirm what you've told us. I wouldn't be surprised if you're all lying about where she stands with you." She looked back up at the wall, grimacin'. "I really don't like having to keep my girls up there on watch all the time. Always feels risky."

Ellis scratched his ear. "Why not go for an electric fence? We had one back in Savannah, and-"

"Savannah?" She looked at him sharply. "Boon Hill?"

Somethin' about her tone should've been worryin'. "Yeah, that was us." He smiled. "Did y'all get our messages on the radio?"

 

* * *

 

 

"First rule of surviving out in the wild, kid: _never_ give up any information unless you have to." Nick bumped his head against the wall, starin' up at the ceilin'.

Ellis moved his arms; hard to move 'em more than an inch with his hands bound behind his back, but he needed to get more comfortable. "Shit, how was I s'posed to know she'd get all pissed off about my radio messages?"

"I hate old ladies." Francis was standin'; he'd somehow gotten himself up on his feet and was pacin' around, hands tied tight behind his back. They didn't have no guns, so it wasn't like they could just bust right out. "Never thought I'd be seeing a prison cell again." He grumbled, kickin' one of the walls. "Guess it isn't a real prison cell, but it's the closest they've got."

Louis just _sighed_. They'd given him a black eye for some real messed up reason. Francis'd been yellin' a whole bunch when they'd been surrounded by guards, and somewhere in the scuffle it'd been _Louis_ that'd been decked in the face. Beat gettin' shot, but looked like it'd hurt like hell.

"You said a bunch of people left your little base, right?" Nick squinted up at the ceilin'. "Maybe they didn't get your messages, or maybe they did. But they recognize the base name and the city name."

_Shit_. Ellis groaned, squeezin' his eyes shut tight. "Christ on a cracker, man." He swore under his breath, head hangin'. "I didn't even think about it none. If they ran into my daddy at all? He was probably a real piece of shit to them."

"Do you think your father would've come through here?" Louis was lookin' at him expectantly. "If he did...do you think that's gonna be an issue in the future?"

"Oh, yeah, the future of being imprisoned." Nick grunted. "Face it, we're gonna be stuck here for a goddamned while. There's at least thirty of them, armed. Probably more, if they're pulling shifts to guard this place. That's way more than most bases have."

Louis grunted, lookin' over at Nick. "Can you cut that shit for thirty minutes, please? I get it, it looks bad now, but come on: we'll find a way out of this! I don't believe for one second that we're all going to die here."

Ellis looked towards the door, frownin'. He hadn't been thinkin' about it like that. Louis sounded real hopeful--but were they seriously gonna be able to escape? It sure didn't seem like it.

_Just think about what Louis is askin' for, man._ Ellis chewed on his lip. "Well, my daddy's not real nice to folks he don't know. I reckon he'd probably try to strong-arm his way into a place and take it over. He took a whole mess of people with him, too, so I bet any base along the way'd be mighty unhappy to meet any folks from Boon Hill."

"Great." Nick started to talk, but Louis was givin' him a hell of a glare. "Alight, I'll shut up."

"As much as I hate hearing bad news..that is information that we needed." Louis shook his head sadly. "We're probably going to have to be careful about telling people where we're from, then."

"Speak for yourself." Francis scowled. "I'm not from Savannah, so who cares? Only one of us here that is from that place is Ellis. They can't go blaming us for shit that his dad's doing."

The door swung open, makin' all of them look at the doorway.


	20. Food

Ellis's eyes lit up when he saw Ro'. Unhurt, mostly; she had an arm slung up with some bandages, similar to what Nick'd had for a while, and a whole mess of bandages over one of her eyes. He hoped that weren't nothin' serious.

The old lady stood back, lookin' at Ro' the whole time. "And you're _certain_ that they're good people?"

Rochelle scowled at the old lady. "Damn nicer than you people. Who the hell punches _Louis_?" She snorted. "Punch Nick if you're gonna punch someone."

"Hey!" Nick was still rubbin' at his wrists; whether he'd actually been tied harder than the rest of them or not was unknown. "C'mon, Rochelle, you say that loud enough around these bi-" He paused, then licked his teeth. "- _people_ , and they'll probably go and lock all of us up again."

The other women were hoverin' nearby, watchin' all of them like they were weird aliens. Ellis'd never seen nothin' like it before. They didn't all look like they were younger than him--had they really never seen men before? _Hell no, they saw my daddy and his crew. So why're they actin' so weird?_

"You guys busted up our truck." Ro' put a hand on her hip. "Probably destroyed a ton of our supplies, too. All we were doing was passing through. We probably wouldn't have even noticed your base or stopped in that town if you hadn't attacked us."

Ellis rubbed at his own wrists when he was finally untied, cringing. It sure did hurt. He'd never been tied up like that before. He glanced up to see that the women had all gone back to pointin' their guns again. Probably worried that they'd try to attack them now that their numbers were a bit more even. _Shit, I don't even think Francis'd be dumb enough to try that now. Even if we got these gals down, there's still dozens of 'em outside._

"We have to be careful to protect our own." The old lady pointed at Ellis. "That one said that you all came from Boon Hill. That place has been nothing but trouble for us."

Ro' scrutinized the looks on their faces before turnin' to the lady. "Can we go somewhere else to talk about this? Get a meal in? I'd bet that these guys have been having a rough time because of whatever the hell you decided about them."

 

* * *

 

 

Lord, if it'd been awkward in the room before, this was ten times worse. They were all sat at some big table. It looked like it was two big plastic tables that'd been stuck close together, with a tarp draped over it to make it look like one big one. Most of the other ladies were eating in another room, save for the ones that were on guard duty. The five of them were seated across from four guards and the old lady, eatin' what looked to be biscuits of some kind.

"It's been a while since we heard from Boon Hill." The old lady stopped chewin' on her food, lookin' right at Ellis. She had the kind of look that'd make a tougher man that Ellis wither--at least, he kept tellin' himself that so he wouldn't feel so bad about how intimidatin' she was.

"Sorry 'bout that." Ellis swallowed down his food, tryin' to smile politely. Clingin' to the hope that bein' honest and kind would get him somewhere. "I was broadcastin' every day after ma...died." He faltered, lookin' down at his food again. It felt like it'd been ages ago, but the sharp pain in his chest was quick to remind him just how little time it'd been since she'd passed. "But there were some powerfully nasty folks, so we had to leave."

She tilted her head, frownin'. "I didn't know. The Boon Hill people who came through here messed up quite a few of the radio towers in the area. Ain't been able to get signals as far as we used to get them. I didn't even think twice about the signals being quit."

Ellis went back to eatin'. He didn't wanna think about it, but there wasn't much else _to_ think about. "...Daddy was usin' them radio signals, wasn't he?"

"Speak up, boy." She was lookin' at him sharp again. He shrank back, then cleared his throat and set the biscuit down.

"Ma had a real big squabble with my daddy. He wanted to go travelin', said that they'd die if they stayed in Savannah. Ma wanted to stay put, said that they'd been broadcastin' about bein' a safe place for ages, it wouldn't be fair to abandon it." It all settled in his head uncomfortably. "...Bet he went around to places sayin' he was from there, relyin' on her good word to get folks to trust him."

She leaned back, pullin' out a cigarette. Looked like it was homemade. "That's _exactly_ what the hell he did. My girls don't trust men that much. Most of the men in our lives had been wife beaters, rapists--folks that saw the zombies as an _opportunity_ to get away with being fanciful warlords with shackled women at their feet. Fantasy-chasing _pigs_." Her eyes narrowed. "That's why he was able to fool us so easy."

The old lady lit her cigarette, smirkin' over at Nick. He looked like he'd do anythin' to get one of those. "Boon Hill had a reputation with us. Nice sounding lady comes on the radio, tells us about the weather, shares a recipe, invites folks to talk back. Sounded like a dream come true to us. We'd spend day after day trying to boost our own signal. Never could get it far enough to reach Savannah." Her smirk faded real fast. "So this fella comes along and says he's from Boon Hill--and he's got some women with him, too. Women that ain't bein' made to look pretty or carry supplies. We let him in."

"Let me guess." Nick pulled out one of his own cigarettes, earnin' a flabbergasted look from her. Ellis reckoned that her homemade cigarette had nothin' on the real deal. "They stole your shit."

She snorted, shakin' her head. "Lord have mercy, I wish that was it. You see, back then? We only had a few guns. Just what we needed to survive. He probably saw us as a real opportunity." The other ladies around her were lookin' real tense. "He started announcin' that he was the new leader of our base, and anyone that spoke out of line was gonna get shot."

Ellis grimaced, puttin' his head in his hands. "Yeah, that sounds like daddy, alright." He sighed, pressin' down on his eyes with the palms of his hands. "I ever see that man, I'm gonna deck him."

"Do a bit more than that to him if you can, boy." She grimaced. "My girls weren't about to get told what to do by a man. We fought tooth and nail to be free from that sort of tyranny. A few of the girls with him tried to join us. Got their asses shot right away." She leaned back to take a drag. "Well, we managed to wrestle enough guns away from them that they went runnin'. We figured that'd be the last of it. They got humiliated by some women, they'd lick their wounds and move on."

"Uh-uh." Francis snorted. "You ever piss off someone like that before? They always come back."

Louis cringed. "...I'm betting that's exactly what they did."

"You got it." She pointed at the two of them, laughin'. "He threw a buncha molotovs over the wall. Just so happened to hit our greenhouse. Torched the whole thing, along with all of our fresh food and our seeds. Used a rope to lasso a few of our gals off the wall. Only found one of them a few days later. Bastard tied them up to trees and somehow lured a Boomer over to 'em."

Nick stared down at his plate. "Could've been worse." He looked over at her when she scowled at him. "Guys like that, holding grudges like that against women?" He exhaled. "I've heard horror stories of men coming back for revenge on women that range all the way back to before the apocalypse, sweetheart. Usually ends in rape."

She sighed. "I guess that was _one_ thing that he surprised me with. I was expecting more threats of sexual violence than none. It's fucked up that the best I can hope for when a man attacks is that it will just end in physical violence." Her mouth pulled in an ugly snarl. "That bastard kept coming back for a week. So we had to start setting up traps. Anyone that looked like they might be part of his group? We'd set off a trap." She took another drag. "...We noticed that the number of women with him dwindled down to zero pretty fast. I'm guessing that the ladies with him didn't approve of what he was doing."

Ellis just felt sick. "I'm...I'm so sorry, ma'am." He felt her eyes on him again, but kept his own eyes glued to the plate. "Lord, I know I couldn't've stopped him, but I wish like hell that I'd known he was gonna be so awful. Nick's sayin' it's good he weren't rapin', but that don't make the rest of this shit _right_!" He looked up, bitin' his lip. "There's so few folks still livin' out there, and there's still folks that feel the need to act like a bunch of monsters. I ain't here for that."

_Shit_. His eyes widened. "Where'd y'all put my bag? It's real important."

She frowned. "We put it with the rest of your confiscated items." Her eyes narrowed. "...What's in there that's so important?"

Ro' cleared her throat. "The cure."


	21. Questions

He'd never been happier to leave a base before. The ladies had food, and they were setup in such a way that it'd take a damn army and a half to topple 'em, but they were all real jumpy. There'd been plenty of rumors of bad folks runnin' around, and the stories that his little group had shared were more than proof enough that those rumors had more than a little bit of truth to them, but that didn't mean that Ellis had ever expected it to be _this_ bad.

_And my daddy...I can't believe he was doin' this bad shit._ Ellis clung to his bag, starin' down at the dead leaves. Sure, his daddy'd been a mean son of a bitch, but he'd been livin' in a friendly base for most of the apocalypse. Why would he go and attack another friendly base? What the _hell'd_ happened to make him change his mind?

"Well." Ro' sighed, stoppin' them. They were back on the highway again. She looked both ways, then looked up at the sign hoverin' just overhead. "Looks like we're walking. I don't think any of these cars are gonna work." She frowned up at the watchtower, just barely peeking over the treeline. "I wish we could stay..."

Nick snorted. "Yeah, sounds terrific. Base full of women that want to kill us every time that we say something." He checked over his gun again; the women hadn't taken anythin', but Nick didn't seem to believe it. He'd checked his gun at least four times since they'd left. "I'd give it two goddamn days before they'd be castrating us and preaching about how evil men are."

Ro' grunted. "Can we _not_ do this? They were good people that just ran into the wrong sort of people." She looked at him sharply. "I bet they would castrate _you_ , though. You have got to learn some manners. You said you were a conman, right? How did you ever rip anybody off with that attitude of yours?"

"Listen up, _sweetheart_." Nick glared at her. "We didn't _need_ to go save you. We could've just kept going. Those goddamn women wrecked our truck, burned half our shit, and fucked you up. I don't care if they're just _misunderstood_ \--they put us in a goddamn shitty spot."

Francis cuffed Nick, eyes narrow. "Chill. I hate it when our shit gets busted, but that isn't Ro's fault. We've got to stick together if we want to survive. That's always been the rule: we don't leave anybody behind."

Nick shoved Francis, causin' both of them to stop in their tracks. "Oh yeah? I didn't see you getting goddamn misty-eyed over leaving Zoey behind!"

"Guys? This isn't the time..." Louis tried to walk over to split them up, but Francis pushed him back.

"Hell no, this _is_ the time." Francis scowled down at Nick, their noses almost touchin' from how close they were. "There was _nothing_ we could do about her and you know it."

Nick's mouth twisted to the side, sneerin' up at Francis as he folded his arms across his chest. "She got shot in the gut. There was a chance we could've saved her, but you knew it would've been suicide. The tools we needed to save her with were back in the hospital, remember how you shut right the hell up when you realized how hard it'd be?"

Francis's eyes widened, and while he was barin' his teeth, he looked more mortified than anythin' else. "We didn't have a _choice_! That hospital was _crawling_ with Tanks! We both would've _died_."

"Do you know that for sure?" Nick looked real mean now, like he knew he was winnin' whatever pissin' contest this was. "If Rochelle was in the same position, would you have said the same?" He smirked. "Or would you be fighting through that hospital like it was nothing? 'Cause I seem to remember that you were pissed that Zoey wasn't wanting to get in your pants-"

Ellis jumped back when Francis socked Nick a good one to the jaw, wincin'. It looked like it'd hurt. Francis pounced on Nick and started pummelin' him, shoutin' out obscenities and callin' him a liar. Ellis realized real quick that Francis wasn't about to stop, and when he saw blood, he panicked. "W-we gotta get him off, man!"

It took all of them tuggin' to get Francis off, with Ro' punchin' him in the nose to knock some sense into him. Ellis watched as Ro' and Louis tried to calm him down, then looked down at Nick with a grimace. His face was a bloodied mess, with one eye shut tight. "You know y'all were askin' for that, right?"

Nick coughed, slowly sittin' up. "I know." He looked over at Francis, watchin' as the bigger guy started stormin' down the highway. "It's been coming a long goddamn time."

Ellis winced, helpin' Nick up. "It sure weren't the best time for it, man. We ain't exactly in a good spot for there to be bad blood between y'all." He could see that Ro' was tryin' to get Francis to stop walkin', but he was clearly in no mood to stop. "C'mon man, we gotta get walkin'. Don't wanna fall behind."

Louis'd waited for them, at least. He walked a bit ahead, occasionally glancin' back to make sure that Nick and Ellis weren't fallin' behind. It didn't seem like Francis was gonna slow down any time soon, leavin' their group a bit more thinned out than it should've been.

As Ellis helped Nick see where he was goin', he couldn't but think about the conversation. Francis'd obviously cared about Zoey. They both had, from how they'd talked about her before. But they hadn't done everythin' they could to help her. They'd made the decision to let her die from an awful wound--he didn't need to know a lot about gun wounds to know that gut shots were the _worst_.

He couldn't help but think about it.

Were they bad guys?


	22. Reflection

Time seemed to be the exact thing needed to heal Francis and Nick's squabble. It took the better part of the day--and most of the night--for them to find a safehouse. Safehouse was a loose term, of course; it weren't a house, and it weren't safe.

It was just some maintenance shack along the road. Whatever maintenance purpose it had before was useless now; all it had was a bunch of electronic panels for flipping circuit breakers. That'd be real nice if there was even any power in the area. Flippin' the switches did nothin', and more than one of them was rusted stuck.

It only had one door, but it only had one room, too. The decision was made to sleep in shifts, with two folks on guard duty outside. Not a one of them wanted to go on first watch, so Ro' grabbed a bunch of tall grass from the side of the road and held it out. Drawin' straws was the only way to keep it fair, since nobody was volunteerin'.

That didn't stop Nick from whinin', of course, and it sure didn't make Ellis feel better about it. Now he was stuck outside, jumpin' at every little sound, while Nick blew smoke in the air. Wasn't real windy out, neither, so the smoke was stayin' put. It wasn't the worst smell, but it wasn't pleasant.

"Do y'all _have_ to smoke?" Ellis couldn't stop himself. He regretted it right away; of course Nick had to, somethin' in cigarettes got folks addicted. It was hard to quit, from what his ma had told him. "Sorry." He sighed. "Guess I'm just in a pissy mood, man."

Nick laughed, blowin' more smoke. "Christ, this is you _'pissy'_? I don't think you know _how_ to be pissed off, kiddo." He stamped out his cigarette, at least, lookin' over at Ellis. "You were pretty quiet today, you know." He paused. "Not that I'm complaining." Nick just laughed when Ellis punched him lightly in the arm. "Seriously, though, you're not usually a quiet guy. Not from what I've seen of you, anyway."

Ellis hadn't really been thinkin' about talkin'. Things were gettin' heavier than what he was used to, and he didn't know what to do. Usually, his ma would have advice, or Keith'd get him through whatever tough times there were. Hell, even his daddy was usually there to deal with the heavier shit. Here? Everybody expected him to know how to handle their weird, unspoken rules.

It was more than he could take, if he was bein' honest.

"Ellis?" Nick started wavin' his hand in front of Ellis's face. "You fall asleep standing up? 'Cause that's creepy, if you did."

"What? No." Ellis sighed, frustrated as hell, and took off his hat to scratch at his hair. He was missin' the ability to bathe already. "Just-Jesus, man, this life's hard as hell." He looked up at Nick, frustration bleedin' out of his words. "I got used to what it was like to be with a big group, and I never had to go makin' tough choices. Like...if that'd happened to me? Havin' to choose between goin' off on a suicide run or leavin' someone to die? I would've froze up on the spot and probably got my own ass shot."

Nick was scrutinizing him. It was sort of tough to keep talkin' firmly when he was gettin' looked at by someone who had to live that life every day. "Sheltered life, huh?"

Ellis nodded glumly. "Yeah. I didn't know nothin' about how bad it was out there, outside of Savannah. Out here." He motioned to the road, and to the zombies that were too far down to notice them. "I always just thought it was like... _Mad Max_ , or some shit like that. Like there were a whole mess of towns spread out in the apocalypse, and just some folks were drivin' between. I didn't think that it was more like...barely anybody left." His face fell. "It don't feel like there's _nobody_ left, 'cept for a couple of stragglers. I've read shit and watched shit where it looks like there were millions of people all over the damn place."

"You were pretty young when this all started." Nick leaned back, starin' up at the stars. "When this shit first hit, people were dying nonstop. It wasn't just the zombies. People were turning while they were driving, crashing their cars, killing thousands in pile-ups. People were killing themselves. Calling this the end days. Murdering. A lot of people just died from stupid shit."

Nick glanced over at Ellis. Ellis was tryin' real hard to look tough, but judgin' from how Nick's expression changed, he had a feelin' that it didn't work. Ellis jammed his hands in his pockets, breathin' in deep to keep calm.

"It was worse in big cities up North. Not so easy to escape when you have to go down seven flights of stairs. Or seventeen. A lot of buildings were on fire, and some places didn't stop burning for the first month or so. New shit'd catch on fire, and no one would be around to put it out. Then people were setting fires on purpose, to kill zombies." He closed his eyes. "It just kept getting worse for a while. And...it didn't really get better, either. So, people adjusted to it. I'll be honest, kiddo--I'd never heard of any base being sheltered like yours. You were..lucky, in a way."

Ellis shook his head. "I ain't _feelin'_ lucky. It ain't _lucky_ that I've gotta learn about this shit now. I feel like a damn fool." He grimaced. That much was true; he felt dumb as hell. "It's like I don't even talk the same language as y'all. I was taught that bein' kind's the best a man can do, and that bein' cruel ain't gonna get you nowhere good."

Nick laughed so loud that Ellis had to look up. Even with the bruises, the way that his whole face lit up was _nice_. Ellis looked back down again, cheeks red. Hell, he couldn't tell if he was blushin' 'cause of that crush, or 'cause he was embarrassed. Probably both, which was even _more_ embarrassin'.

"There's not a goddamn thing wrong with being kind." Nick was still smilin' a little, even though his laughter'd died down. "It's hard to do that. Hard to cheer people up, hard to keep a positive attitude. I still think that Louis guy is crazy for trying to keep things upbeat."

"Hard to be kind?" Ellis didn't believe that for a second. "Now y'all're just tryin' to make me feel better." He grinned crookedly, lookin' up at Nick. "There ain't nothin' easier than bein' kind."

Nick snorted. "Easy for you to say, kiddo. It's hard as shit to be kind when you can't trust anybody that you meet. I didn't trust those goddamn people back there for a second; if they hadn't valued Rochelle's opinions as a woman, we all would've been goddamn screwed."

Ellis faltered. "Well, I guess that just shows how much it sucks out here. Can't trust nobody, so you can't be kind to nobody. Gotta be a shitty way to live." He faltered, eyes wide. "I-I don't mean that the way _y'all_ live is shitty, i-it's just-"

"No, it's shitty." Nick sighed. "I wish it wasn't." He looked away. "...Like what happened with Zoey. It was rough. The people we ran into had been in a safehouse before we got there. We opened the door, they all panicked. Zoey was trying to tell them that we just needed shelter for the night, they shot her in the stomach. We had to drag her out to some other building--I think it was a gas station, actually."

Nick was starin' off at somethin' in the distance. Avoidin' eye contact, Ellis realized.

"She wasn't able to breathe properly." Nick sounded quieter. "Little squeaks. Didn't take us long to make a decision. If we headed back into the city, it'd take us at least four hours to get to the hospital, and we had no way of knowing if we'd find anything to help her. She'd probably die from the pain long before then. We'd have to leave her right there." He finally looked at Ellis, eyes red. He was tearin' up.

"Francis started talking to her, trying to figure out what she wanted. You know, see if she wanted us to run back, or try to get those people to help." Nick's mouth quirked. "So I shot her, while she was distracted. Put her out of her misery. Francis knew I was doing it, we both knew it. But I think we both knew that we had options. We could've _tried_. Christ, we could've gone over and killed those people, stolen their supplies." He toyed with some of the rings on his fingers. "But keeping her alive...she would've been in horrible pain. And there wouldn't have been a place for her to rest and get better. We had to end her suffering."

Ellis let that sit for a while, the heaviness of Nick's words weighin' down on him. He'd had to make that choice with Keith. He'd chosen to try and fight the inevitable, try to keep his buddy alive. He thought he'd been doin' the right thing, but had it been right? He hadn't even asked Keith. Keith'd probably been in horrible pain the whole time, with nothin' to dull it.

He jumped a little when he felt an arm around him. Nick was huggin' him, sort of. A half-hug, just with one arm. Ellis was more than happy to lean on him. "I'm sorry." Ellis's throat was hurtin'. It was like he'd cried without sheddin' a tear. "I don't know what that was like, but I'm _so_ sorry, Nick."

Nick squeezed him, and Ellis felt Nick's chin restin' on the top of his hat. "It's fine, Ellis. Feels good to, uh, tell somebody about it. Bet it felt good to Francis when he got to punch me, too." He chuckled, lookin' up at the stars again. "You know...it's not all bad now."

Ellis blinked. "Huh? How so?" He didn't see Nick as an optimistic sort of guy. Ellis pulled back, lookin' up at Nick's face.

The Northerner just smiled. "I never got to see this many stars when the power was still on."


	23. Foreboding

It was hard to sleep once the shift was up, but Ellis _obviously_ had to have gotten some sleep--he wouldn't be wakin' up if he hadn't passed out at some point. He yawned, shiftin' uncomfortably on the floor. They only had enough sleepin' bags for two folks to use 'em at once, and Ellis'd thought it'd be mean to make Nick or Ro' sleep on the floor, Ro' especially since she was hurtin' so bad.

He sat up, a bit disappointed that there weren't any banter, nor was there any food waitin' for him. Not that surprisin'; it wasn't like they'd had time to setup a little fire in the buildin', and he couldn't even remember if they'd grabbed enough--or any--food supplies to keep them goin' long enough to justify eatin' every day.

But it was real quiet. Quiet enough that he found himself worryin'. It was dark in the room, just as it'd been the night before. No windows, no lights. He'd never felt claustrophobic, but the room was definitely makin' him feel weird. Ellis felt around the edges until he grabbed a door handle, then shoved the door open. He had to shield his eyes against the sun; felt brighter than it'd ever been before. Christ, had he slept in?

Ellis froze, blinkin'. He _had_. It was mid-day, judgin' from where the sun was. There was snow on the ground--had it been snowin' last night? Way too much, more than he'd ever seen before. He hugged himself, shiverin' as the wind picked up. Sure as _shit_ never got that cold in Savannah.

He looked around, feelin' his stomach drop. He couldn't see nobody around. Not even any zombies. _How long was I in there?_ Ellis bit his lip. _Shit. Now ain't the time to be tensing up, man. Gotta keep up._

Walking felt harder than it'd ever been before, with the snow grabbin' on his ankles and holdin' his boots in place. It was deep. Deeper than it'd even _looked_. Lord, his clothes weren't built for it. That probably explained why the zombies were gone; they'd probably froze to death.

But where was everybody else?

He could feel himself tearin' up. Frustrated. Sad. Hell, some kind of mix of everything all at once. He'd thought that they were all some kind of new family for him. Sure, they'd come from a life where you had to make tough decisions constantly, but he wasn't a liability. He was good at fightin', and strong. Why would they abandon him?

_Y'all know exactly why._ Ellis sniffled, starin' down at the snow. Unblemished. No one'd been walkin' through here for a while. _They left y'all behind because you couldn't keep your damn mouth shut. They probably all talked about it and weighed out the options._

He stopped to dry heave. Nothin' to throw up, so all it did was waste time and make him feel even worse. He wiped at his mouth, snifflin' again. _Time to keep walkin'._ Each step felt like it was jostlin' him around extra hard. It took so much effort to move his feet through the snow, and the cold was makin' it all the worse.

They had to leave him behind. He was a _serious_ liability. If his daddy was walkin' around and makin' Boon Hill sound bad, then any time that Ellis mentioned it, they'd be facin' more problems. Even if he kept his mouth shut, if folks looked at his face, they might notice that he looked like his daddy-- _especially_ if they tacked on the accent.

Just from what they'd been sayin', that had to be it. If somethin' was going to get in their way, they'd drop it. Maybe Louis and Ro' made a fuss, but Francis and Nick would convince 'em. Louis probably put up the biggest fuss of them all. He didn't seem like the sort to leave nobody behind. But he was one guy, and one voice against three wasn't gonna win. Ro' was too practical to let keep someone like Ellis around.

Shit, _would_ Louis even stick up for him? It wasn't like he'd been travelin' with them for years. Or even _months_. They barely knew him. He was just some kid to them. He didn't know shit about how things worked outside of Savannah. He knew how to fix cars, and he knew how to shoot zombies. Cars were rarely even close to functionin', and everybody still livin' knew how to shoot a zombie.

He stumbled, chokin' on tears. Christ, he'd never been hurtin' like this before. He'd been followin' after them like a scared little kid, and now he was out in the middle of nowhere. He half wanted to crawl back to those ladies and beg them to let him in. They'd probably put a bullet in him, but he sure as shit couldn't make it on his own. This was worse than bein' alone back at Boon Hill.

Ellis stumbled again, this time trippin' over himself hard enough to hit the soft ground below. It felt warmer than it should've, and it felt like it was wrigglin' under him. He wondered if that was what it was like to freeze to death.

 

* * *

 

 

" _Shit_!"

Ellis blinked, struggling to move. He felt groggy as hell, as if he'd been sleepin'--and he was _sure_ that was Nick's voice, to boot. _Wait, where'd all the snow go?_

He shot up to his feet, surprised to find Nick on the road in front of him. Also strugglin' to his feet. Francis was helpin' him up. Laughin' at him, but helpin' him up. Louis was right next to Ellis, askin' him if he was okay. Ro' was right there, waitin' for them to get movin' again.

"What in the _hell_..." Ellis rubbed at the back of his neck, confused. He couldn't figure out what'd just happened. Had he been hallucinatin' that? "What happened, y'all?"

Louis breathed a sigh of relief. "You were out like a light. Nick's been carrying you the whole way." He smiled. "I guess you were a _lot_ more tired than you thought."

Nick just groaned, stretching until his back popped. "Christ, kiddo, you're heavier than you look. Next time? I'm kicking you until you get up."


	24. Relax

He didn't tell anyone about his nightmare. At first, he'd wanted to. Hell, he loved sharin', and it got awful quiet real fast on the road. Somehow, he just couldn't get the words to come out. Every time that he thought about tellin' the group, the words'd die somewhere in his throat.

Even just admittin' that he'd had a nightmare would probably be funny to the group. There were freakin' _zombies_ all over the place and folks dyin' left and right, of _course_ everybody was havin' nightmares. He didn't even know if they felt anythin' charitable towards him. They might laugh at him for bein' so attached when they were all strangers.

Well, Nick had been carryin' him. _Nick_ , the guy who whined all the time. Shit, he was whinin' even while Ellis was deep in thought, complainin' about how windy it was. If Nick had been willin' to carry him, then the group probably did care a whole hell of a lot more than he was givin' them credit for.

So why wasn't that reassurin' to him?

"Talk to me, kiddo." Nick'd gone quiet, fallin' back in step with Ellis. Ellis hadn't even realized that he'd been laggin' behind. "You're even quieter today than you were yesterday." He lowered his voice until it was just barely a whisper, and good lord was that doin' somethin' to Ellis. "You're seriously starting to worry me."

Ellis swallowed the lump in his throat, shakin' his head. "S'just...had a nightmare, that's all." Shit, Nick don't look convinced. Ellis whined a little, chewin' on his lip. "It's nothin' man, I guess I'm just worryin' that y'all might leave me behind."

Nick sighed. "Maybe. Some day." It was honest, which Ellis both appreciated and hated. It stung real bad. "That's just how things are out here. But. We won't be leaving you behind unless there's no way to save you, 'kay?"

"What do you mean by that?" Ellis frowned. "I mean, ain't it gonna cause trouble to have me around?" He blurted it out without thinkin', groanin' in diappointment. _Lord_ his mouth could run when it wanted to.

"Trouble?" Nick laughed, pattin' Ellis on the shoulder. "What, you mean with your dad spreading a shitty rep for you? Look at me. Christ, look at _Francis_. People see us coming? They see trouble. Even Rochelle didn't trust us, remember?" Nick stopped talkin', and Ellis realized he'd probably thought that was good enough. Once Nick noticed the look on Ellis's face, he sighed. "Look, Ellis. I don't think any of us give a shit. You aren't a rapist. You're not a cannibal, either. You don't kidnap people, and you don't try to enslave people. Whatever skeletons are in your closet, whatever shit's going on around you, doesn't matter to us."

Ellis rubbed at his arms. "Do y'all mean it? 'Cause, I just..." He bit his lip. "I mean, I guess I just never thought about bein' alone before all this shit went down. I don't know what I'd do without all y'all. If Ro' and Louis hadn't showed up, those nasty folks probably would've grabbed me and done whatever the hell they were plannin'."

"Afraid of being alone?" Nick smiled. "Don't worry, kiddo. I think we're _all_ afraid of that. Christ, I used to be a drifter--I used to _live_ for being alone. Now?" He glanced over at Francis. "We argue a lot, but Christ, if a goddamn Tank was chasing him down, I'd throw myself in its way." There was a brief stretch of silence that extended across the whole group, like everyone'd stopped talkin' all at once. Nick licked his teeth, lowerin' his voice to a whisper again. "Better off dead than alone in this shit. Trust me on that one. You find a group worth fighting for? You'll goddamn fight to your last breath to see them live."

"Thanks, man." Ellis smiled, lettin' himself feel relieved. He _was_ relieved, in a way. Hearin' somethin' that open and honest from Nick was a surefire way to get him to buy just about any story. He still couldn't let go of the nightmare, though. Ellis was a superstitious kind of guy; always had been, especially since a lot of the folks had loved to share ghost stories.

He kept havin' a feelin' that his nightmare was a vision, or a prophecy. Somethin' that was gonna happen.

And that feelin' wasn't going away, even after Nick's reassurances.


	25. Squirrel

For a while, shit was _boring_.

Not to say that borin' was _bad_. Far from it, really. Borin' just meant barely any zombies, barely any towns, and no signs of folk wanderin' about. Food was scarce. They'd take turns goin' without it, all while they watched their supplies dwindle. It weren't like they could lug around a fifty pound bag of flour--hell, it weren't like they'd even _found_ a fifty pound bag of flour.

Ellis got introduced to the real way that folks survived outside of bases.

It was gross as hell.

Since it was gettin' colder, hot drinks sounded good. Ellis'd perked right up when Louis told him that they knew how to make a hot drink. Just about everything had gone bad already. Hot cocoa? That'd been out for _years_. Tea usually just tasted like nothin'; apparently better teas would still taste fine, but findin' those was rare.

So when he heard about a hot drink? Holy shit, was he on board. They were setup just off the highway, with a little fire and not so much as a tarp to tack to a tree. Exposed as shit. Still, he was rubbin' his hands together, half hopin' that the zombies would show up so he could get runnin'. Runnin' around might make him warmer.

One sip of the hot drink made him almost wanna spit it out, but wastin' anything was a bad idea. He watched them make the next batch. Pine needles. They were puttin' pine needles in the pot, and callin' that a hot drink. Tasted sharp and bitter. He put a dollop of honey in his drink when nobody was lookin'. Hidin' it didn't feel right, so he offered it up not long after. None of them took him up on it.

He sort of got why when his cup was empty. If they put honey in all of their drinks every single time that they had a cup of it, then they'd be out of honey. Ellis found himself apologizin' for usin' even a tiny bit of it, even though nobody was mad at him. He punished himself with another cup of the bitter stuff, makin' a face the whole time.

The pine-tea wasn't the worst of it, though. The worst of it had to be the huntin'. Obviously, they weren't about to find a deer. Deer seemed to be real scarce. Whether folks'd shot most of 'em years ago or the zombies were chompin' on 'em, findin' one was so rare that it weren't right to kill it.

That left small critters. Rabbits and rats. His nose crinkled. Sounded like the kind of shit that his daddy loved, of course. This was _neither_. Nick and Ro' setup the traps, little contraptions made of sticks and long grass that didn't look like they'd work. Sort of surprised him to see just how well they worked.

Two squirrels. Hardly a meal for five folks, but it was meat, and it was hot. Ellis couldn't watch them skin both of the little critters, nor could he handle watchin' it when Louis rubbed salt on the skins. Apparently it was a good idea to keep any fur they could find, 'cause if it got cold enough, every bit'd help.

Lord, he almost _cried_. He was eatin' just a half of one of the squirrels, with Francis optin' to go without eatin' for the day. Ellis'd forgotten what it was like to eat meat, and even though it was just a little chewy piece of squirrel cooked over an open flame, it tasted amazin'. Gross as hell, but amazin'.

He wanted to whine when they didn't even stay there, but thought better of it. Sleepin' out in the open was probably a bad idea, even if they had two folks on guard duty. That didn't make it any nicer to know that they'd only stopped for a few hours.

But Ellis was gettin' used to it. It was tough, and he missed his truck, but it was tolerable. The added touch of warm drinks and cooked meat made it all feel worth it. He found the lack of zombies to be especially relievin'. It wasn't like Savannah, where there'd be a few hundred zombies down any given street at any point out of the day.

Apparently that had somethin' to do with where people lived. Folks lived in cities that were densely packed, towns that were pretty populated, and then there was vast stretches of just about nothin'. Even in those places that were "nothin'", there were still zombies crawlin' all over.

This road was somethin' special. It didn't have many stops on it, and the ones it did have were all smaller towns. They barely ever encountered more than a few dozen zombies. Not many zombies were still alive in those smaller towns, either beaten out by locals that probably had to move on, or starved to death themselves. It made things a hell of a lot safer.

But that didn't change how borin' everything was.


	26. Coach

Snow was gonna happen eventually, but it still sort of shocked Ellis to see it. Whatever snow they got in Savannah was usually pretty light, and while that meant havin' to put up with everything bein' just a little bit colder, it wasn't so bad. He could already tell that this was gonna be a _lot_ worse than just a dustin' of snow.

The flakes were different, for starters. Huge! He'd never seen 'em so big before. His eyes lit up like it was Christmas--hell, it usually only snowed 'round Christmas anyway, so it might as well have been Christmas--and he tugged on Louis's shirt. Louis didn't seem as happy to see the snowflakes.

Everybody was movin' a bit faster. It was hard to keep up, but Ellis wasn't about to fall behind. Everyone was gettin' more and more grim by the day, which was startin' to wear on Ellis's nerves. He didn't get how a set of folks could stay so grumpy all the time.

"Hey, I know!" Ellis grinned, joggin' a little to catch up with the group. "I never did find out when y'all's birthdays are! We comin' up on anybody's or what?"

Everyone looked at each other oddly. Ro' was the first to respond. "Sweetie, Louis and I haven't been counting days for years now. We just count it as another year when we see the leaves start turning."

Well shit, that was depressin'. Ellis looked over at Francis and Nick expectantly. He still wanted to know what their _actual_ birthdays were, but he almost didn't want to hear what Ro'd say if he asked again. It'd be even worse if the two of them couldn't even _remember_ the days.

"October twenty-fourth for me, kiddo. May fifteenth for Francis." Nick shrugged. "Easy enough to remember. It starts warming up and raining enough, we count that as May fifteenth. Leaves change color? Happy birthday to me." He chuckled. "What, did Boon Hill record that shit?"

Ellis brightened, grinnin' from ear to ear. "'Course we did! Ma had a big whiteboard and a whole mess of markers. She'd write the calendar and the year on it, and calculate that leap year shit. It wasn't just for birthdays though." His smile remained sunny as ever, even with the storm gettin' worse. "We could keep track of what days folks went on supply runs and where they went, and how long some prepped food'd last for before it went bad. It was pretty organized."

Ro' looked at him, smilin'. "That's...actually a pretty good idea. I'd been looking at it like it was some stupid sentimental thing, but if it had a utility, too..." She tilted her head. "I don't remember seeing that when we were there."

"Oh,  _yeah_." Ellis blushed, rubbin' the back of his neck awkwardly. "Well, one day the weather got pretty rough, and we forgot to cover the whiteboard. Whole thing got washed away, and neither me nor Keith could remember what all to put on it." He sighed. "Sorry 'bout that."

"That's okay." Ro' shook her head, laughing softly. It was nice to hear her laughin'. "Well." She paused, lookin' at him knowingly. "When's your birthday?"

 

* * *

 

 

When the snow got bad enough, they had no choice but to take an off ramp and try to find somewhere to hole up until the storm passed. The town in question was still pretty packed with zombies, leadin' to one hell of a mad dash through the streets. It was a good burst of adrenaline, all things considered.

Ellis didn't say it out loud, but it was fun as hell, too.

He kept hootin' and hollerin' as he blasted through zombies and whacked heads off, teeth showin' in a half-snarl, half-smile the whole time. It was infectious, too; just five minutes of that and all five of them were shoutin' out insults at the zombies and countin' how many kills they got.

They found a safehouse not too far into the town, too. It was more like a safe _room_ , really, with an exit that lead into more of the buildin'. Looked like it'd been some kind of mall back before things went all to shit. They had to spend a good twenty minutes or so shootin' through the bars on the door to kill off the few zombies that'd chased them the whole way there before barricadin' the door, each of 'em laughin' from the rush of it all.

The room wasn't really stocked with anythin'. It just looked like it'd been ransacked so many times from dozens of folks comin' through that it wouldn't be even a little bit useful to anyone beyond some basic shelter. Well, it weren't entirely empty. There was a table, and an empty bookshelf.

Oh, and the bodies.

Ellis was tryin' real hard not to look at them. They didn't look too old. Maybe a few weeks. Sure didn't _smell_ good--but the zombies stank just as bad, so it wasn't real noticeable. He couldn't deny that he recognized those bodies. Folks that'd left with his daddy. His daddy weren't with 'em, but they'd _definitely_ been travelin' together.

He could see old Coach's body in the pile, and it was takin' everything he had not to break down cryin'.

Then Louis caught his eye and the first little sob forced its way out of his mouth, and that was it for him. He was a _wreck_ , and nothin' was gonna quiet him until he got it all out.


	27. Debris

It'd be too hard to bury that many folks, especially with it snowin' and with the zombies bein' all over. Ellis had to improvise, drapin' a tarp over 'em after linin' 'em all up. His thoughts were all jumbled up in his head, makin' it especially hard to remember a good prayer. He'd asked the group, and none of 'em knew one.

He said the nicest words he could think of, tears blurring his vision the whole time. No one argued to stay in the saferoom. It'd be too hard to get any sleep while Ellis was on the verge of hysterics. Ro' kept things more clinical and serious soundin' by insistin' that the _real_ reason was that dead bodies carried loads of diseases--but the look on her face showed that she was really feelin' _sorry_ for Ellis.

It didn't look like they'd gone peacefully. His daddy weren't there with 'em, which was real damning given what he knew about that man. _Real piece of shit. Probably wouldn't even think twice about killin' all the folks with him._

It looked messy. most of them'd been shot in the back. A few got shot in the sides, some in the front. Probably turnin' to look at him. He probably made them go in first and gunned 'em down, then kept goin'. Only thing that Ellis was stuck on was the _why_. What reason could his daddy possibly have to kill all those good folk?

Ellis hugged himself tightly, shiverin'. Mostly from the cold, partially from how awful those thoughts were. Most of the mall'd been caved in. He imagined all sorts of action movie shit that might've caused it. Whirlybirds goin' down, explosions, Tanks lungin' through support beams. Shit was probably excitin' and fun as hell when it first started. Now everythin' was decayed all to shit.

Folks killin' each other weren't right when shit was this bad.

A warm hand runnin' down his arm distracted him from his thoughts. He looked up at Nick in surprise, watchin' as the Northerner pulled his hand away from his body and held it. Shit--were they holdin' hands? He looked down to confirm it, then looked up Nick. That smile was somethin' else.

Ellis smiled right back. Timid, not as good as his usual smile, but he could tell that Nick was really tryin' to cheer him up. Lord help him, it was _workin'_. He looked ahead and noticed Ro' holdin' Francis's hand.

Maybe some folks were bad--but this weren't bad at all.

 

* * *

 

 

No clue how it'd been livin' this long. No clue how it was still rampagin'. Ellis's breathin' was fast and sharp, keepin' in line with the rest of them. Tank. A freakin' _Tank_ , somehow squeezed tightly into one of the abandoned stores. It just about broke the whole store into pieces gettin' out.

They were ill-equipped to fight it, so runnin' was their only option. Except runnin' from a Tank _weren't_ an option. Ellis yelped as it swiped him aside, hittin' a wall with a crack that made him think for a moment that he'd broken a bone. Nothin', luckily--thank _God_ for bein' a Carrier.

He struggled up to his feet, watchin' as it ran towards the rest of the group. _Shit_ , they were in a corner; that thing was gonna pulverize 'em! Ellis's eyes darted about, nearly hyperventilatin' from how hard he was breathin'. He got the idea at the last second, pullin' out his gun to shoot away at the Tank. It whirled to look at him, then did exactly what he'd hoped it'd do.

It raised its arms up to start beatin' at its chest, instead grazin' the crumblin' material of the ceilin'. All at once, a ton of steel and who-knows-what-else toppled down on top of it, makin' Ellis grin. " **Yeah!** " He jumped up, feelin' like he was on top of the world. "I reckon we can take on anything!"

Excited, he rushed over to the rubble--only to freeze up.

It hadn't been a little bit of rubble.

It was enough to totally _block off_ that dead-end.

"Oh _shit_ , man." He dropped his gun, hands shakin' too much to hold it. "Guys! Ro'? Y'all okay?"

"We're fine!" Louis's voice was barely audible through all of the rubble. "But we're trapped behind this rubble! There's no other way out!"

Ellis started pullin' at the rubble, feelin' his heart skip a beat when none of it budged an inch. "H-hold on! I'll get all y'all out of there!" He didn't know _how_ , but he _had to_. For a few moments, all that could be heard was him tuggin' and gruntin' as not so much as a single piece of busted-up ceilin' moved.

"Sweetie..." Ro's tone made Ellis start tearin' up. "You still have the cure, right?" She barely gave him a chance to start protestin'--he didn't like where this was goin'. "Listen to me. That base isn't far from here. You just need to make it there."

The finality to what she was sayin' made him sob. He pounded at the rubble, frustrated. " **Hell no** , I ain't leavin' _none_ of you! I just...I just need to find a crowbar, I can get this opened up!"

" _Ellis_." Nick's voice was much sharper. "Just go to the base. They'll have more people. Tell them to come help. A rescue crew will get us out in no time. You'll freeze to death. Christ, what if a horde comes? I bet the zombies heard that cave-in."

_Shit_. He was right. Ellis reluctantly pulled back, snifflin'. "I'm gonna...I'm gonna run the whole way. Y'all just hang in there, okay! You're real safe, at least. A-and you've got the food and water, right? Ro's got it." He bit his lip. " ** _Don't none of you die, you hear me?!_** "

He didn't mean to scream it, and the silence was unbearable after that.

"I promise, Ellis."


	28. Delusions

Findin' his way out of the mall was like a fever dream gone bad. He was pushin' through halls that probably had doors buried under years of dust and rotten supports, trippin' over mannequins that looked more like burn victims than plastic, and slippin' on surfaces that were already coated in a thin sheet of snow from the various holes in the roof.

He found his way out, and almost lost all hope when the wind smacked him in the face.

It was a whiteout.

He'd never seen it snowin' like that before.

There was a street sign to the right of him, and if he squinted, he could _swear_ that there was a buildin' close to it. Visibility was so bad that he couldn't even tell if there were any zombies about. He guessed not--not in this mess, anyway. Hell, the rain made 'em go runnin' off to hide. This'd probably kill any that were still around.

Ellis holstered his gun and pulled his arms into his sleeves, huggin' them tight to his body. He pulled the collar of his shirt up until the little dip in his nose from an old scar held it in place, then put his head down and started walkin'. This was the right way--it had to be, right?

He couldn't stop to be sure, and he sure as shit couldn't go back and ask Ro' if she was positive about the street they were lookin' for. That cave-in was some serious shit. _And they're stuck there 'cause of me._ Ellis bit his lip, tryin' to stop himself from tearin' up. _I thought I was helpin', but I just about almost killed all of 'em._

But he was sure there was nothin' he could've done better. If that Tank had gotten any closer, it would've killed all of them. Plus, at least they were insulated--sort of. They had each other for warmth, and they could probably light a fire. Eat stuff. They could make it.

Ellis stopped to squint at the closest sign. Looked like an intersection, maybe. The snow'd covered up the signs. He kicked at the pole it was on until the snow fell off, relieved at the sight of it. He was on the right street. He just needed to keep walkin'.

Of course, he didn't know anythin' beyond that. They'd been goin' off of a rumor that Louis'd heard years ago, a rumor that only mentioned goin' North on this street. It didn't mention anythin' else to look for.

Shit, what was he gonna do if it _wasn't_ real? He thought back to Francis and Nick fightin' about Zoey. Hell no. He couldn't do that. He wouldn't do that. If he went far enough and found nothin', he'd march right back and figure out how to get them out. It didn't matter if it was hopeless or not.

It was gettin' harder to walk, though. He couldn't tell if that was 'cause it was cold, or 'cause there was so much snow on the ground. Ellis stopped at the next sign, squintin' at it. Still the same street. Was that good? How long did the street go for? Had they _really_ been this close?

He kept walkin', only to trip over somethin' buried in the snow. Somethin' that groaned and started movin'. Ellis scrambled to his feet, backin' away and pullin' his gun. The metal was freezin' cold and stickin' a little to his hands.

His eyes widened as the snow fell away, and his daddy stood up, blue in the face.

"W-why'd y'all kill 'em?" He blurted it out, as if that was the only question he had for his old man. Shit, where would he even _start_ with this guy? Ellis danced back a few steps when his daddy stumbled forward, arms out and groanin'. Had he turned? Hell no, zombies didn't act like that unless they were in the movies.

His daddy raised a finger and pointed at him, eyes almost completely devoid of any sort of emotion. " _You are as bad as I am, boy. Don't you forget that for a gatdamn second._ " His voice rose from a rasp to a shout. _**"You left 'em to die like dogs!"**_

 

* * *

 

 

Ellis's eyes flew up, gaspin'. _Shit_! He'd passed out when he tripped! He struggled to his feet, inches of snow slidin' off his back. Oh _lord_ , if he'd been cold before, he was _dyin'_ now. His teeth were chatterin' so hard that he thought they might break. Ellis started tryin' to run through the snow again.

Deeper. It was deeper, and the snow was still fallin'. And worse, the whiteout was _still_ just as bad. He didn't know how long he'd been out, and with no way to tell what time of day it was, he couldn't even guess how many hours of sunlight he had. Once the sun was down, it'd be too cold and too dark to possibly keep goin'.

But there was nowhere to stop, neither.

_I have to stay alive. They're countin' on me._ Ellis clutched the strap of his bag. _And this cure is countin' on me, too._

Distantly, he realized that Nick might've told him to go get help just to make him _leave_. The chances of him findin' anyone in time, much less convincin' 'em to come _back_ and save his friends, were pretty slim. All he could hope for was that this base existed...and that he could trade the cure for a rescue team.


	29. ...

Rochelle'd warned him about what to watch out for if he got too cold. Apparently, when you got too cold, your whole body would heat up until you were practically sweatin' bullets. Then? Death. Didn't make a lick of sense, and she didn't know how it worked neither. Bill'd taught her about it, and he'd been adamant about it bein' the most important thing to remember in the winter.

So when Ellis suddenly felt warm, he had two horrible realizations:

One? He'd definitely passed out again.

Two? He was _toasty_.

Ellis shot up, eyes wide. He wasn't deep in snow. Hell, he wasn't even out in the storm. He was on some cot with a blanket wrapped up tight around him. He blinked owlishly, lookin' around the room. It sort of reminded him of those doctor's tents in the war movies he'd seen, except it was in a room.

"Ah, you're awake." An older lookin' lady came up to him from a desk at the far corner of the room. He'd never seen a lady with darker skin before, although it might've just been exaggerated from the white coat she was wearin'. "You're lucky that you didn't lose any fingers or toes. No gloves? Thin socks? Risky to be traveling in snow like this."

He looked down at his fingers, wrigglin' them. Lose them? He didn't know _how_. Could they freeze off? "Sorry, ma'am, I didn't know nothin' about that."

She jerked her head back. "Well, there's an accent I never thought I would hear. What's a redneck doing this far up North?" She almost sounded suspicious. Ellis watched her step back and winced. _Shit_ , he hoped his daddy hadn't somehow caused shit to happen up here.

"The base I was at wasn't safe no more, so we had to go. Louis was sayin'..." Ellis trailed off, eyes wide. "Shit!" He stood up in a hurry, not even questionin' _why_ he was wearin' some weird paper dress thing. "Ma'am, do y'all got a rescue team?"

"A rescue team?" She looked at him oddly. "We...could probably wrangle a few people. Why?"

Ellis clasped his hands together; he wasn't down on his knees beggin' yet, but he was ready to if he needed to. "Please, ma'am, I was travelin' with four other folks when a Tank attacked. They ain't hurt, but they're trapped behind a cave-in." He realized that she would need more info than that, so he charged ahead, suckin' in a deep breath. "It's that mall right at the end of the street that y'all found me on, I was headin' out to find this base so I could get help to get 'em out. They've got food and it's probably pretty warm there, all things considered, but none of us could budge the rubble an inch, and--oh, y'all're definitely gonna need to bring a shovel and a crowbar, 'cause it's all wedged in there pretty bad, and they told me to hurry, but I don't--shit, how long was I out?"

It took her a few minutes to respond, stammerin' a little. He realized he'd been talkin' a little too _fast_ and it was probably a bit overwhelmin' to her. "Well, I can't tell how long you were unconscious in the snow, but you've been asleep for...six hours now." She checked her watch to be sure, lookin' him over. "You need to stay put, too. The body can't handle that much exposure, and you were nowhere _near_ properly dressed for the weather."

"B-but." Ellis faltered, panickin' a little. "But if I ain't with 'em, how're they gonna find my friends?" He wondered if this, too, was like what Nick'd said. Was she just sayin' that they were gonna send out a rescue crew so she could later tell him that they were all dead?

"Listen. We know the area better than you, and our guys can find a cave-in in the mall." She pushed on his shoulders until he was sittin' again. "Our boys have been clearing that place out constantly. It's one of the few safe routes to get to our base. A bit weird to hear about a Tank being in there. We've been diligent about clearing them out."

Ellis looked up at her, queasy. She was lookin' down at him in the way that one might look down at a kid, and lord knows he was sure _feelin'_ like a kid. "Ma'am... _please_ just promise me y'all are gonna seriously go find my friends. We didn't cross the whole country just for all of them to die now."

She smiled; it was a real warm smile, too. Reminded him of how ma would smile. "Don't worry. We'll find them." She started to turn to leave, but he couldn't stop himself from askin' just _one_ more question.

"...Y'all haven't met any other, er, _"rednecks"_ , have you?"

Her answer was weird. It took too long for her to say it, and she wouldn't look at him when she did.

"Once."


	30. Safe

He just had to take her word that they were sendin' folks out. He didn't want to risk pissin' off nobody, especially since he needed their help. At least the doctor'd been nice enough to leave him with some pencils and paper. He'd almost told her that drawin' was _queer_ , but stopped himself. Shit, that word just might not mean what he'd thought it meant, neither. His daddy'd been fond of it, especially when it came to tryin' to "teach him right".

So it was relievin', in a way, to get to sit there and draw. Weren't much noise where he was, save for the howlin' of the wind outside. He hadn't drawn in ages, but it felt as normal and natural as anything else he had to do on a daily basis. He'd look up at the door every now and then, hopin' to see someone come bustin' in to tell him that his friends were okay.

But no one did.

Ellis hated how pessimistic he was startin' to feel about this mess.

 

* * *

 

 

Days were bleedin' together after that. He got to hang out with the leaders of the base. Apparently the storm was so bad that they hadn't heard back from their rescue team, either. There were food caches stored around the mall, so they were probably fine.

Nice folk, from what Ellis could tell. Almost a hundred of them. That was more people than he'd seen since he was a little kid. They'd managed to secure a big buildin' and the parking lot surroundin' it. It was a strange setup, but once he got a good look at it, he was _impressed_.

Zombies couldn't get through the electric fence, and--provided it weren't a whiteout--they could see down every street for _blocks_. Plenty of time to sound the alarm for a Tank. At any given time, they had at least twenty folks on guard. The buildin' was across from a gun store, which they'd long since cleared out. Guns were counted, as was ammo. A dozen or so folks were sent out in teams of four to go search for more supplies, but it was mostly just weapons that they looked for.

One of the floors of the buildin' had been fitted with a whole bunch of cool-lookin' lights, fillin' each room with plants all year long. They had so many fresh fruits and vegetables, with a lot of it gettin' canned for later use. Tons of spices, too. Unlike Boon Hill, these folks actually had a few electricians. Whole place was wired up with heat, electricity, hot water, refrigeration, and lights.

Only problem they had was that they didn't have no radio. The radio tower was destroyed a good ten years ago when some wanderin' folks got in a fight with a bunch of Tanks. Ever since, they'd been totally cut off from the rest of the world, so they would send out folks to scout out the town in case there were any survivors.

They'd run into his daddy, apparently. He didn't mention that he knew who they were talkin' about. He didn't want to end up tied up again.

His daddy'd tried to take over, but he'd only had about five folks with him. Not a one of them agreed with him. They all got thrown out, anyway. They'd expected that group to come back, or at least try to sneak back in, but that was the last that they heard of 'em.

Ellis had to grapple with that for a while. His daddy'd shot 'em 'cause they were refusin' to go back and take over this place. They probably weren't havin' none of his shit after what he'd pulled with those ladies at that other base. But that meant his daddy was still out there. _Or, he really is dead and I really did trip over him. Hard to tell what all was real and what weren't in that storm._

 

* * *

 

 

The storm let up nearly a week later, and Ellis was restless as hell. He was wearin' the winter gear they'd given him and was pacin' back and forth, starin' at the gate. They still kept tellin' him to wait. It weren't safe for one man to go out there alone. Sure, that was true, but he still couldn't stand it. He was livin' in a warm, safe place, and they were out there, freezin' to death, maybe even dyin'.

Then, he saw it.

There weren't no mistakin' it. Not a clear day like this.

He ran as fast as he could and jumped clean _over_ the fence, hearin' someone remark that it needed to be taller if an _uninfected man_ could clear it, and didn't stop runnin' until he was divin' right into Nick. Sure, they both hit the snow in a pile of limbs, and sure, Nick was swearin' and pissed off, but Ellis couldn't stop babblin' and squeezin' Nick 'cause holy _shit_ , they were all _alive_.

He got up awkwardly, laughin' as he saw the rest of the group grinnin' at him. They looked like they'd been through hell, with heavy bags under their eyes and cuts and bruises all over, but they were all alive. That was what counted.

 

* * *

 

 

They gave the cure to the doctor. All of 'em, sittin' in a fancy lookin' conference room. Ellis hadn't realized that she was the big boss of the place. Apparently she'd taken over when the ex-military guy runnin' the place got killed by a stray Witch. Made more sense to have a leader that never went out on runs.

She'd opened up the sealed container right there, breathless and near _cryin'_ from how beautiful it looked. Not a single vial was so much as cracked. Ellis was beamin'; he'd done a damn good job of keepin' that shit safe.

 

* * *

 

 

Not much changed with the cure spread around. Once she'd given everybody a shot, she'd announced over the building's intercom that they all now carried the cure, and any newcomers needed to be brought in to be injected ASAP. Other than that, it was still the same shit from Boon Hill, just...easier.

Everybody was assigned to teams; rather mercifully, they assigned Ro', Ellis, Francis, and Nick to work together as a team. Then they just had to put their team number in the box, and they'd find out if it was their turn to go lookin' for supplies. If it weren't? They got to relax.

Louis had a specialty, apparently. They had workin' computers, and through some careful work, they'd managed to get the old university's internet workin'. From there, they'd gotten in contact with the UK, and now they had a whole mess of new computers from an air drop. Air drops were pretty rare, since they came from across the sea and couldn't risk touchin' down for any fuel, but what little they got was _amazin'_. Louis was instructed to work with their IT groups on gettin' a more secure network.

It all flew over Ellis's head, but the few times he was on one of them fancy new computers was mind-blowin'.

The whole world had kept on goin' without 'em.

There were cellphones, phones that y'all could carry around all over the place. TVs were flat as hell, and big as hell. Video games looked like they had _real people_ ; he couldn't even look at Super Mario Brothers the same way anymore. Shit, technology was so advanced that he could _play_ Super Mario Brothers--and its sequels, that was a shocker to him--on the _computer_.

It was dizzyin' to think about how there was a whole world out there full of people livin' in normal society, but apparently they weren't allowed to go over to those places. There was a risk that they'd spread the infection. So they were quarantined. Indefinitely.

But that was alright, in Ellis's mind.

There weren't as many zombies anymore, and there was plenty of food and fun to be had. Shit, the view from his room was pretty nice, too. Overlookin' the whole city. He had to share his room, of course; weren't enough room in the tower for everybody to have their own room.

But he didn't mind sharin' it with Nick.


End file.
